The Swimmer's Blood

We survive recalling crests just off the shore
beyond the children's bobbing games
but before the swimmer, the elderly woman
in a skirted aqua swimsuit and rubber bathing cap.
She dove over the waves and now swims
slowly in the post-storm, turbulence
hand-over-hand, feet splashing evenly,
her head turning in measures of breath.
The waves roll her up. She must be around 75, the age
of my mother-in-law before years of cigarettes
destroyed her internal organs.
I imagine seeing Anne with such a casual stroke
against undertow and current. It may not have mattered
after settling the girls into solid schools
that I don't play cribbage, that I don't
swim comfortably in such depth,
that my maternal grandparents were peasants from Hiroshima.
In those early immigrant years
grandfather was lucky to find a wife
among the farm families already on Maui
while his friends flipped through pictures and astrology charts.
From a single photo I know Mitsuye was delicate
with strong eyebrows that suggest a playfulness
that would save her as she labored first
to put her brothers and sisters through professional schools
then raise eight squabbling children (squabbling still);
she was lucky not to be misled by rumors and refinished photos
to find Katsunosuke, a man under 25 and handsome.
I wonder if he had the energy after plantation work
to be kind to her: not merely sexual but comforting.
And I am fortunate to watch this woman swim
what would equal laps in a pool and thank Anne
for the swimmer's blood in my daughters' skinny frames
darting in and out of the surf
competing with each other for who will swim out
with their father first
beyond the swathes of seaweed into the Atlantic.