With the present heat wave, or normal summer as we term it in Spain, there is sometimes and almost irresistible impulse to go into our outdoor public/private pool and cool off.  There are supposed to be lights around the pool, but they are more often off than on, and even when they are on they only half work.  This means that the pool, outside the hours of normal use, is more of a black space than a welcoming facility.
     But temptation is there to give in to, to hell with Puritan reserve, and swimming at night is something which always surprises by the fact that the water is still warm and there is something magical about swimming alone, in darkness.
     Our pool is often the centre of what can only be termed cacophony and night time is the only time that you get something approaching silence.  Admittedly, there is the sound of kids (no matter what the time of night), television and radio - to say nothing of all the other types of electronic methods of noise production that our neighbours seem to have mastered.  But there is a tranquility which is deepened by darkness.
     On two sides of the pool are houses and on the other two sides there are houses and flats - though they are further away, so there is always slight spilling from un-curtained windows.
     It was while swimming in darkness, not blackness; away from and yet visually near to so many other people that the idea for the poem came to me.
     I swim every day, and usually try and complete my metric mile, but being in a dark pool was different.  I was not wearing my glasses, so there was that element of seeing and not seeing that informs so much of my observation.  There was also the fact that the pool is a public space, but at night there is a sort of privacy about the darkness which is at odds with its position.
     There is an element of the voyeur in this poem; of being able to see while remaining unseen which struck me.

Dark pool

Unseen ripples roll faint light

(that bleeds, insidious,

from isolated window-screens)

and drowns a dappled net

of dimness strong enough

to tangle bathers

in the liquid night.

Pale arteries of faded trees

bleach out to alveoli bunched

against a moon-robbed sky

with stars’ suggestions

lurking at the edge of sight.

One public globe slews

globs of floating light to

smudge the surface

in a gesture almost

natural and painterly.

I do not swim.

The noise of water

sucked and dropped

by moving arms and feet

would be, I might suggest,

immodest,

in this private gloom.

I laze in darkness,

hardly moving, held

within a distant-light-surrounded

empty space where eyes

are stopped by brightness

on the other side of glass

where life plays on

with licence,

unobserved –

except by me.

This poem has taken a number of drafts.  This is something which I found surprising because the notes for the poem seemed to flow so easily.

     For me, the most interesting element in the poem is the use of the word 'immodest' in the ante-penultimate section.  I am still thinking about my use of that word.