Experience

All the words dipped in eloquence,

ever tone of optimism

that trips of the tongue in honeyed sayings

is no substitute for a single second

when the skin discovers

the difference between

believe and experience.

 

It was a lesson that grade school teacher

learned in such vivid clarity

when telling her students

how the unheated swimming pool

in the middle of December

wouldn’t really be that cold

as long as you though heat,

kept repeating it constantly,

thought image of suns and summer

until you could slip into that water

and think it was practically boiling.

 

But kids wouldn’t accept it as gospel

unless she took the first dip,

her face and voice in its screaming song

quickly undoing her mentor’s instruction!