POEMS IN HOLY WEEK v. Thursday - Premonition

I suppose it might have been the wine from the Poetry Group meeting the night before, but something was different when I took my swim.  I felt good, but my rhythm was forced and the swim was not as therapeutic as it has been.  The question of how much of how we behave is determined by mere physicality and how much by mental attitude is something which interests me - as does the concept of definition.
          As someone who has worked with language in a very direct way all his life, I find what words can do endlessly fascinating.  This poem came from real experience and the feeling that while everything was ostensibly normal, something was out of kilter.
          I am always conscious that I am swimming in a pool which is next to an Olympic Canal and within a short walk of the sea: three areas of water, the same and very different.  Our pool uses a salt filtration system so it is not like the normal chlorinated pools, but more of a half way house between the salty sea and fresh water.  The character of the water is not the same and I felt the need for some personification in the poem to make the distinction clear.
          I am also constantly aware that water can kill.  Easily.  Swimming is always a calculated risk and while I am not constantly aware of the danger, I do believe the last lines of the poem and that, at any moment, What now is my support / can close above my head.
          I think that this poem develops the ideas in the other poems of this sequence and I am looking forward to seeing where this ends up!

Poems in Holy Week

v.         Thursday – Premonition

The difference of a day

is everything.  All things

the same, but now, today,

this day, is different.

I swim in my accustomed lane.

I am alone, I feel refreshed,

but my advance is a slow tear

through liquid’s pulpy mass.

Moisture’s fibres stick and cling

and each stroke is a sluggish one.

I fight resentment of the

prisoned pool and feel

a soft rejection where terms

float and sink are fickle things

in water’s glossary.

I swim my lengths.

But as I do, I think how easily

what now is my support

can close above my head.

I am not sure about the title of this poem, perhaps Foreshadow might be better, but I am prepared to give what I have written time and see how it looks in a few days.