Jumping from the diving board
It was a hard rain
Loud, steamy, sticky
Screams from the swingsets
It’s a therapy
You and me
Insight
The title sounds like a request for coordinates, but the poem never answers with a place. Instead, it moves through action, weather, and sound. The diving board suggests crossing a threshold before knowing how the landing will feel. The rain is not distant or cleansing; it is loud, steamy, and sticky—something entered bodily rather than watched from shelter.
The screams from the swingsets keep the scene unsettled. They might express delight, fear, or that childhood intensity in which the two can sound remarkably alike. Play and vulnerability occupy the same ground.
Calling this “a therapy” does not turn the moment into a diagnosis. It suggests that shared attention—jumping, listening, remaining together in the weather—can become its own way of meeting what cannot yet be explained.
“You and me” is the nearest the poem comes to answering its question. Where we are may matter less than how we inhabit what is happening now: without certainty, but not alone.
Image Credit
“A child’s swing set” (2007), Mike Plante. Licensed under CC BY 2.5. Source: Wikimedia Commons.
Primitive Joe 
