Swimming Pool Archaeology

I wrote myself to relevance in my notebook!  In other words I started off with something like a reminder to myself and then moaned about an idea which had come to me while swimming and had then entirely disappeared from my memory and finally something about the weather.  It was only after a page of banality that the title for this poem came to me.

     Swimming takes up a frighteningly large percentage of my waking day: I know this because, in an idle moment, I did a little sum on the back of an envelope (the whole traditional thing) and worked out roughly how much time I spent going to the pool; getting changed; swimming; getting showered and dressed, ready to have my post swim cup of tea and complete some sort of writing in my notebook.  I have no intention of telling you what astonishing period of time this takes up during a year, but it does explain why a significant proportion of my poetic work takes its experience directly or indirectly from the swimming pool!

     Those of you who swim will know that, although swimming can be a fixation, it is, essentially boring.  You just go up and down a swimming pool.  I don't even vary my stroke, it is overarm all the way.  For sixty lengths.  A metric mile.  Job done.  It fulfils some sort of need in me, and a day feels empty if I do not do my swim, but I also recognise that it is boring.

     So, your mind tends to wander.  Strange thoughts and preoccupations fill the space and you sometimes have to remind yourself of the rhythm that is keeping you going - or the mouth full of water tells you that you need to pay more attention to the mechanics of water propulsion!

     As you are basically following a black line for your lengths, a black line on white tiles, anything which is not black or white tends to get your attention.  This is why any detritus tends to be noticed by the length swimmer.  The list of rubbish that forms part of one of the stanzas of the poem is a cumulative one, I have never seen that amount of stuff in the pool at any one time.  Our pool is kept clean and I wouldn't want anyone to think that the excellent staff do anything less then their jobs!

     But you do notice things and this poem, is like many of my poems, in being one of observation.  Observation and speculation.  At least, that is what I was aiming for.  It is for the reader to tell me whether that has been achieved!

    I have to admit that I really like the title.  I find it satisfyingly complicating!

Swimming Pool Archaeology

How long, after a normal day,

does it take the pool to purify?

And what exactly counts as ‘pure’?

The cheek-by-jowl of swimming

is not kept apart by

distance, floats and lanes;

our intimate immersion makes communion

much more visceral than lip-smudged

chalices, passed hand to hand.

We skim the clear-slab-world

and need no radar to discern

narrative debris lying there, beneath.

Under more weight than dirt can press:

scrunches, threads,

earrings and hoops,

sequins, tabs,

plasters and hair –

and other stuff too small to stop

our eyesight passing through.

I saw, during one turn,

and recognized by shape,

that which had floated off the day before:

inadequately fixed

to my wrist band,

a paper rectangle,

with printed number. 

One-o-one?

A passing thought:

I could stop.

Retrieve the artefact,

because . . . 

What is the point of keeping

something of no worth?

What purpose could it serve?

Where would it rest

during remaining lengths?

Would it survive transition to the air?

It was mine (on loan),

then lost, now found.

It was authentication

of an effort made;

a small thing

in a small-thing world,

that binds our little

lives with something,

almost like sense –

            and I had turned

and swum into the straight.

The Smartwatch Martinet

does not encourage pause.

And I swam through my

metric mile.

And then forgot.

Was my quick glance

enough to certify

the number’s truth?

How did it make

the purifying night?

Or was I making sense

of randomness,

again?

I have also completed a new version of Poems in Holy Week.  The last set of Poems in Holy Week, called Clocks of Dust were published in Flesh Can Be Bright, this year's set called Rites of Arrested Time will be published in the next volume of my poetry called . . . the eloquence of broken things . . . which is scheduled to be published in early Spring of 2017 by PRAETORIUS BOOKS.

When you are swimming, especially with my myopic eyes, it is only things in the water that have any clarity. My goggles and the water itself act as lenses and I can see a man sight better under water than I can when I take my head out of it!
     It is not surprising then that the details of what I see under the water during my sixty lengths are of more interest than anything else: the gaps between the tiles on the pool floor; the odd pieces of detritus that wash around; arms, legs and bodies all pass my generally uninterested gaze. The only colour in my monochrome underwater world are the bathing costumes of the ladies - the men's are usually nondescript and functional, unless they are those absurd long shorts that I think are uniquely designed with anything but swimming in mind.

     From time to time, however, some guy will have some startling bathing costume which cannot be ignored.  Recently it was a garish cut-up design of some antipodean flag which commanded attention as it was so unlike the black of navy blue briefs of everybody else!

     Swimming is not the most intellectually engaging of sports so there is plenty of time for musing and the body automatically goes through the motions of overarm and I begin to wonder just how much they cost and what they are made of.

     Briefs are not the choice of swimming costume of any but the dedicated swimmer and I know that inflated prices for material heavy costumes are sold on the premise that the material is some new form of substance that will keep colour, deflect water and make you faster.  This was part of the thinking that got me started on what eventually became this poem.

     I also thought about how easy and direct my swimming was when I was a child, and then compared that with what I do now each time I have a swim.

     Some differences are simply sense.  Swimming is much more enjoyable with goggles; the shoes and the hat are demanded by the regulations of the pool; the ear plugs are because I hate water trapped in my ears, and since the pool is not directly linked to the changing rooms then one of those magic towel that soak up water and dry quickly is simply sense when getting changed.

     But things are different and the difference is what informed the latter part of the poem.

     This is the first poem I have written which has a sort of chorus and I am still wondering if it adds anything!

     The last lines before the final chorus made me think.  I do enjoy swimming, but not in the same way I did when I was a child.  I think that swimming now is more of a need for me than an occasional pleasure.  I need to think more about the word 'fun' and wonder just how that relates to my swimming experience!

™&©

Cotton, Dacron, Jersey, Orlon,

Elastane and Aqualast,

Spandex, Lycra, Latex, Nylon,

Chloroban and Durafast!

When nappied underpants were gone

(but still with mop of golden hair)

the reflex clack of grannie’s knit

magicked a onesie just for me,

baptised in Barry Bay.

Scratchy garments’ thirsty sag

increased my weight a hundred fold,

but not enough to hinder dad

from flinging me behind his head.

I’d fly and shriek with pure delight

before the splash and scrambled gasp,

‘Do it again! Again!  Again!’

Until my father’s arms were tired.

Cotton, Dacron, Jersey, Orlon,

Elastane and Aqualast,

Spandex, Lycra, Latex, Nylon,

Chloroban and Durafast!

I was told how long before

I’d learned to walk or talk

I’d crawl in pools

directly to the edge.

Each time

(and just before I fell)

my mum or dad,

would scoop me up

until, and serially fed up,

my father’s patience snapped:

I crawled towards the drop –

he let me go straight in. 

And then he carefully

fished out the coughing,

drowned-lite babe. 

A lesson learned,

he fondly hoped. 

But placed, unspluttering,

upon the side, I resolutely

moved again

always towards

the margin’s tempt.

And water that

I simply loved.

Cotton, Dacron, Jersey, Orlon,

Elastane and Aqualast,

Spandex, Lycra, Latex, Nylon,

Chloroban and Durafast!

When I was young

I swam with ease:

undress and bathers and then in;

and swim and out and towel dry.

Three ha’pence

on the trolley bus

red chlorine eyed

for home.

Cotton, Dacron, Jersey, Orlon,

Elastane and Aqualast,

Spandex, Lycra, Latex, Nylon,

Chloroban and Durafast!

Now, ear-plugs, goggles and a hat

Slip-ons for feet (the rules say so);

and towel large, commodious –

and all in substances

that were not made

when I began to swim.

A warm-up length,

pre-exercise

and set my watch.

A metric mile.

Two lengths

cool down,

post exercise,

deodorant and after shave;

with cream for feet, and face as well

before I sit and have my tea.

I feel

much more

professional.

Much less

like someone

having fun.

Cotton, Dacron, Jersey, Orlon,

Elastane and Aqualast,

Spandex, Lycra, Latex, Nylon,
Chloroban and Durafast!

The title of this poem is somewhat unconventional, but I think that it tells you something about how I feel swimming is now treated: an opportunity for marketing and for encouraging people to spend so much more than the cost of a pair of bathers and a towel!

     In my local pool more and more people are bringing a whole bag of impedimenta with them to the pool side: webbed gloves; all types of floats; cut-down, stunted flippers; full face masks with snorkels up the middle; clipboards with length types; nose clips; palm boards and lord knows what else.  I feel positively primitive with my few bits and pieces!  I don't even wear my bone induction headphones any more!

Not the same

This is, I am the first to admit it, an odd poem.
     It started as the memory of an incident - if the occasion deserves such a significant word - during a swim, and the memory emerged in the context of a freer write that was accompanying my ritual cup of post-swim tea.
     When you are swimming I find that the smallest things: like a single strand of hair, or a tiny piece of tissue, or a small fragment of cloth can have an effect on your progress out of all proportion to their size and true influence.
     The poem uses the gradual grubbiness of well used water as a build up to the 'flash' of the foreign body.  I did stop swimming and was disturbed by the sight.  Whether I thought it was a fish or a small, thrown object I do not know.  But the moment was, to put it mildly unsettling.
     Catching something in water is always difficult, and swimming was what I wanted to do, not twist around trying to catch - something!
     It was a nothing moment, but I felt it.  And in writing about it I think that the wider metaphorical meanings of the whole affair come into play.
     I left the title deliberately vague, or at least ambiguous so that the open ended quality of the statement could resonate.
     I suppose it is up to the reader to decide whether there is anything more in this poem than the self-indulgent thought that,
                             
                              meanders freely down, along each
                              end-stopped line

I hope that there is something more.

Not the same

Clarity was gone.

Transparent still, but not precise.

Much more Impressionist than photo-like.

Perhaps it was the numbers;

too much kiddie stuff around;

or much more likely, it was

short showers, too perfunctory,

that gave some texture to my way.

Rhythm regulates, while thought

meanders freely down, along each

end-stopped line.

It’s true, that when you swim

in something less than crystalline

you wonder what, or who you’re

swimming through as you breathe in

each person-loaded breath.

My landscape is my lane.

Each side, beyond the floats,

is chaos, but within my strip of me-ness

Shout, Kerfuffle, Splash are

foreign waters well beyond the calm

of my own ups and downs.

            A flash of yellow!

Across my path.

Unexpected and alive.

In dead-safe water of the pool.

I stopped.  Confused, disturbed

at sensing a true aspect of the depths,

that all pools mock with careful

shallowness.

My stopping showed precisely

what it was I saw:

Elastoplast, and copyright,

and coloured for a child.

But when (so public spirited!)

I saught to catch and to dispose

of what should not float free,

the bright intruder sped away.

Two lengths further on,

along my lonely line,

I was convinced it slipped

again past fingers three and four

of my right hand.

This time unseen.  Though

comfort, not intrusion now.

Companionable oddness.

A thing that made

one metric mile

a little different. 

Even

memorable.

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.