Diving Horse Show, Atlantic City Steel Pier, 1940s

I can’t stop looking at them—
              the way the horse points its legs
                             as if caught in the photo mid-dance, its body

one smooth black silhouette
                  against a background of water—
                                  pool below them, ocean behind them—

and the girl clinging to its back,
                head down, arms and legs locked around its sides,
                               her body hunched in what looks like prayer

or maybe confession; and yes, I think 
                 a part of her must be asking to be saved, 
                                 at least in the sense

that we all are asking for it,
                for the parking ticket to be forgiven
                                or the white spot on the mammogram

to be nothing; for the horse, once more, 
               to enter the water as if it was a homecoming; 
                               for the girl to hang on 

as if she and the horse were one.
               In the reflection in the pool,
                               the shadow of the horse is visible

but not the shadow of the diver—
                more evidence, I’d argue, that in this moment
                               the horse and the girl are one body, their shape

the shape of a cormorant diving,
                sleek black silhouette dropping from the sky,
                               wings tucked tightly to its side as it plunges 

toward the surface of the water
                where it dives again and again
                                with exactitude and devotion.