“It” is a poem of confrontation and surrender. A swimmer meets a shadow in the water — fear personified — and must choose between fighting, fleeing, or giving in. In surrender, she is lifted, not drowned, and the poem ends with a startling unity: the self and the shadow fused, terror transformed into transcendence. It My morning swim wreaked havoc on every cell of my sleepy skin. As the silver water lapped around me the black night faded with a hungry sun, and together we took the day for ourselves. Me, the light and the sea. It begins, as many things do, with a shadow. I held my movements treading water with the stealth of a crocodile. Waiting, watching. I know it is there, under the water. It is coming closer feeding off the deafening beat of my heart as it ripples the mercury surface. There was a sound I had not heard before. Baby cries and angel wings echoed in a ravine. And I listened hard in an ominous wait for what was next. The shadow rises, wrap...