Swimming is a constant source of inspiration for me and I am slowly but surely turning into a caricature of an Anglican vicar who has a single source of metaphor to explain the world!
This poem however does, I think, take what I do and make something of it. Swimming is important for me and it is hardly surprising that it should figure in my poetry.
I am still trying to keep the meditative quality of the week in my thoughts and also the consideration of mortality.
I have attempted to follow my friend Ceri's observation that in a previous poem I had ' looked and focussed in on the ordinary [and] have found a vein of truth'
Poems in Holy Week
iii. Tuesday – Life
Sometimes, just sometimes,
swimming’s simply joy:
the strokes are almost effortless;
the water parts to let you through
and closes carefully behind
as though accepting your
progress and welcoming
your presence as a guest.
You are confined.
The
floats mark out demesne
and the black line of tiles
shows the direction you
should take;
they
even indicate
when you should turn
to try another length.
I swim a metric mile
each day, as if it
signifies –
while kids discard
imperatives and bounce
and splash, ignore the lines
and just get in the way.
My smartwatch measures
out my swim, and tingles
in my hands tell me my
time is almost done and
that the effort’s made.
I swim my distance,
but get out where
I got in and end a
journey nowhere.
The final stanza I first thought was too bleak, but then I thought that there was a truth in it. In one sense it is absolutely and literally true, but it is the other senses that interest me. When I re-read the poem I felt almost like an outsider reading the work of someone else. I am still wondering if that is positive or negative or neither!
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