Cortico Sport

Teeming with tunnel vision and little else,
The tot leaps off the slippery deck and
Flings herself into the depths below.
Five and a half feet of pool water is not terribly deep
But a toddler can drown in one, you know.

My mother moved with such swiftness
That any onlooker would have thought this
Was a coordinated succession.
First one
Then the other.

In fact it was born from a panic
So promordial it takes no input
From higher order cortical areas.

Just adrenaline and impulse.
It was a nudge from the brainstem
From my mother's brain's mother itself:
"Your child is in danger. Save your child."

The two plunged
One right after the other
And for the next nearly two decades
Neither would surface.
Not really.