Rumination in Three Parts

Years ago I lived in Tanzania on the shore of the Indian Ocean and, afternoons, when the heat was too much, I pulled on my fins and walked backward into the broken waves. I had fins because I liked to swim out, almost past where I could see the shore. I was twenty-five, twenty-something. I felt not so much invincible as curious, drawn to peril, easily lost. I never had a premonition of drowning but a dread that I would be eaten. Still I swam because I loved the feeling and the strange peace of being beyond the break and