Lost little song

A swimming pool is one place where you can see all the Ages of Man in their naked majesty - from the very young (much, much younger than they ever used to be when I went to a swimming pool in my youth) all the way to the very old and infirm.  They are the nearest we get to a living representation of those allegorical Dutch genre paintings from the seventeenth century.

     It wasn't quite that which prompted the following poem, but it was pondering on the difference between my own competent pace and the pace of the youth swimming next to me that made me think.  I suppose it was motivated by envy.  After all, I am never going to be as young, slim and fit as he, no matter how hard I try - and I can assure you I have no intention of trying that hard or even at all!

     So I began to think (because you have to do something to counteract the boredom of going up and down and up and down for sixty lengths somehow) and I reasoned that the kid was probably as good as he was ever going to get, he was at the apogee of his physical potential, and therefore the only way for him is going to be down.  So I imagined a sort of momento mori moment and that became the real motivation for the poem.

     As I was writing it I felt that I needed the discipline of a concentrated poetic form and as I developed the poem it seem naturally to form a sort of sonnet.  I have obviously played fast and loose with the form but it gave me the structure that I needed. 

     I like the ending, but I am not sure what it means.  Perhaps I will in time!  The same goes for the title, but it is what I think I meant.

Lost little song

Young, slim and fit. And

mocking my sad speed

(though I was twice as fast as

the slow woman in the other lane)

his skimpy briefs a studied sneer

to a more generous covering

(double-bowed to counteract

the push-off-pool-dragged lines

trying to slip my tummy's

smooth incline to impropriety)

he flaunted youth

and promise cut his strokes -

though water's cling's insidious.

I know.

I have a feeling that this poem is going to be fairly drastically revised before I am finally satisfied with it.  There is something about writing a short poem which puts the whole of your technique under the microscope and demands introspection.