With Emma at the Ladies-Only Swimming Pond on Hampstead Heath by Linda Gregerson

With Emma at the Ladies-Only Swimming Pond on Hampstead Heath

by Linda Gregerson

(published in her 1996 book, The Woman Who Died in Her Sleep,

Houghton Mifflin Company)

In payment for those mornings at the mirror while,

                        at her

            expense, I’d started my late learning in Applied

French Braids, for all

                        the mornings afterward of Hush

            and Just stand still,

to make some small amends for every reg-

                        i...