Summer Suicides

How many kids have you seen, little ones,
who didn’t like to swim? Expats from the womb,
unless held back by fear or mother's arms,
they gambol again in grace-giving fluid,
spin fast bubbling somersaults.
On chairs apart, safe from splashing’s range,
the amnio-amnesiac rest their spotted limbs,
watch heavy-liddedly, with fond thin smiles.
The middle is a slippery, stuff-strewn zone
of psychic halflings: beached uncertainly,
sun-struck, cold, lithe-torpid and fat-spry,
they take quick lurching plunges to cool off,
chase a better body, bob up goggle-eyed,
then kick once and glide down to weed-columned halls.