When I was young, I was a competitive swimmer. I spent many hours in the pool, working out with my teammates. There are specific . . . understandings . . . of swimming with other swimmers. Lane protocols, I guess you’d call them. Basically, you don’t get in the way of someone else’s workout. You work hard. You let others work hard. You don’t become an obstacle.

Years later, when I just wanted to swim laps for fitness, I would go to the pool at the gym during open lap swimming hours. The pool had some basic rules for lap swimming, and former swimmers followed all the old protocols. But. Well. Let’s just say a lot of people weren’t “former swimmers.” And they didn’t get the protocol memo, y’know?

So lap swimming for fitness was filled with frustrating . . . obstacles.

(Just like, well . . . life.)

When I found this poem by Alison Luterman online several years ago, it resonated immediately. And, sure. Maybe it won’t be the same for you . . . if you don’t have any lap swimming experience. But I’m kinda thinking it will. Because we all have obstacles in our days, in our lives. And Alison’s poem shows us that those obstacles might be there in our lane, in our lives, for a purpose.

I hope you enjoy this poem as much as I do.
(Because there are lots of obstacles out there . . . ) (So many obstacles.)

Because Even the Word Obstacle is An Obstacle
Alison Luterman

Try to love everything that gets in your way:
the Chinese women in flowered bathing caps
murmuring together in Mandarin, doing leg exercises in your lane
while you execute thirty-six furious laps,
one for every item on your to-do list.
The heavy-bellied man who goes thrashing through the water
like a horse with a harpoon stuck in its side,
whose breathless tsunamis rock you from your course.
Teachers all. Learn to be small
and swim through obstacles like a minnow
without grudges or memory. Dart
toward your goal, sperm to egg. Thinking ‘Obstacle’ 
is another obstacle. Try to love the teenage girl
idly lounging against the ladder, showing off her new tattoo:
‘Cette vie est la mienne,’ This life is mine,
in thick blue-black letters on her ivory instep.
Be glad she’ll have that to look at all her life,
and keep going, keep going. Swim by an uncle
in the lane next to yours who is teaching his nephew
how to hold his breath underwater,
even though kids aren’t allowed at this hour. Someday,
years from now, this boy
who is kicking and flailing in the exact place
you want to touch and turn
will be a young man, at a wedding on a boat
raising his champagne glass in a toast
when a huge wave hits, washing everyone overboard.
He’ll come up coughing and spitting like he is now,
but he’ll come up like a cork,
alive. So your moment
of impatience must bow in service to a larger story,
because if something is in your way it is
going your way, the way
of all beings; towards darkness, towards light.

Today’s poem was first published in The Sun, January 2010. You can find information about Alison Luterman on her website here.

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You can find A Gathering of Poetry every month . . . on the third Thursday.
Share some.
Read some.
Gather up some poetry!

(Bonny is hosting a special link-up for A Gathering of Poetry. Be sure to check it out!)