I found it tucked between
pages of a used paperback copy
of Charles Simic’s
The World Doesn’t End.

Between “The dead man
steps down from the scaffold”
and “My guardian angel is afraid
of the dark.”

A color snapshot. The 70s?
The shallow end
of a motor lodge pool
sparkles in the background.

Married? Siblings? Friends?
Strangers who have come together
to squint away an afternoon
under a warm sun

without having to look
directly into the camera.
Reflections of reclining
chaise lounges in the mint blue water

match their half smiles
and a memory of almost getting away
with drowning in another pool
off some other highway

between the Midwest
and East Coast.

When Simic says,
“It’s so quiet
in the world,”
how could he have known?

I return to the photograph
of those two I can never know,
realizing how they are nowhere near
the deep end yet.