Illustration from Everard Digby's “The Art of Swimming (De Arte Natandi)” (1587).
“Into my empty head there come
a cotton beach, a dock wherefrom
I set out, oily and nude
through mist, in chilly solitude’’
— From “Morning Swim,’’ by Maxine Kumin (1925-2014), U.S. poet laureate in 1981-1982. She lived in Warner, N.H.
— Photo by Richard Palmer
