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!

Although I eventually bought a new one (or it might have been I picked one up second hand in better condition) my copy of The Little Oxford Dictionary has been in my possession for over fifty years!  It was bought for me to start Secondary School and it stayed with me through the years: at the bottom of my satchel, brief case, attache case and all the other cases and containers that I have used through the years.  In university it was 'on the desk' and that is where it is now.
     The original is very much the worse for wear: stained, pages folded, front cover hanging on with a strip of agèd brown Sellotape, but the text is still useable and readable.  It has been a very, very good buy.
     I am fascinated by works of reference and I have bought many since the early sixties of the last century, including a variety of English dictionaries of various sizes and complexity.  I also have (though I have to be honest, rarely consult) the photographically reduced full Oxford English Dictionary - which has to be read with a magnifying glass.  Whenever I do actually consult it (usually for the historical use section of the words' definitions) I feel like a scholar of old, pouring over some massive tome in a library given over to academe!
     So, my first choice of reference for spelling and definition was from the Third Edition of a little book published a decade before I was born, and I continue to use to this day.  It was only when I looked up the definitions of the verb 'to cut' that I began to think about how society has changed and about how my work of reference was so out of date.
     The definition that informs the central section of this poem was not available on the first couple of internet dictionaries that I consulted - obviously the meaning that I was using was considered so esoteric that it didn't need to be included!  Times change and we with them.
     The poem starts with observation, the little dramas that play out in front of me when, with notebook on the table and pen poised, I wait for my tea to infuse.  The girl's whining first attracted my attention and then the action and reaction of her brother.  It was his ability to 'cut' his sister that I admired and gave this poem its impetus.
     I am sure that some sort of scholarly study could be done checking where the definition of 'cut' (in the sense that I use it) comes in various dictionaries of English; how it changes in other countries that use English, and how popular it is.  I fear that 'cutting' is a declining art and that it has been replaced by sheer rudeness instead!
     The end of the poem uses social media as its conclusion.  I am not sure that this is the modern version of the older 'art' of cutting, but I am sure that it is used in something like the same way - though refusing to answer the phone is not, in my book, the same thing at all!

To cut

. . . decline to recognize person; . . .

The Little Oxford Dictionary, Third Edition 1941, reprinted 1957.

[Definition 7 of 8]

Child grizzle-crying,

ugly glasses,

mother-clingy,

grasping flesh

and all attention.

Mock-derided

by her brother,

who, ignored,

slumped thinker-like,

within his coat,

unhappily.

The stand-off didn’t last,

of course, and soon

the two of them

made equal plays

for parents’ eyes

they both knew

were their right.

The girl’s attention

switched to dad.

The son felt

pushed away;

walked by.

Only kids can ‘cut’

as if it were instinct

and not technique.

That walking past

as if a person

was not there;

was never there,

yet making it

so clear that

they’d

been seen.

My dictionary was always there,

through school and university and job.

‘Authority’ from nineteen forty-one,

‘revisions’, nineteen fifty-seven,

and published the same year

            where words like: nudist,

Pluto, calypso, jive,

yoghurt, lobotomy, rumpus, svelte,

perspex, parsec, hamburger –

had, “recently made good their claim”

and made Addenda not The Book

            description of a cricket shot

was higher up the list of use

than distain by averted gaze

As it must be.

Proximity is relative;

one can unfriend, unfollow,

with a gentle tap
on distant, solitary keys.

I do like the word svelte though, alas, I am a long way from claiming the adjective in relation to myself!  

     I know that some publishing houses produce yearly books of neologisms as a sort of half-way house towards inclusion in the full dictionary, I have a few of them myself and it is interesting to see that some of the words did not make it any further!  

     I am not sure that svelte is instantly recognisable for most people, but that is no reason not to go on using it, in the same way that the definition of 'cut' used in the poem should be preserved, and perhaps practised!

This poem started off in my notebook.  I keep my notebook with me at all times and I write in it every day.  I would like to say that it is packed with profound thoughts and scintillating poetic lines which demand to be made into poems.  But that would be a lie!
     Often the daily entry is of astounding ordinariness like, 'A very slow swim today.  I wonder why?' or 'Well, at least I have another pen now' or 'So, today is Friday and not Saturday.'  Sometimes something more substantial comes of these musings because I do believe (from past experience) that writing something/anything can release imagination and the aleatory is a great source of literary development!
     So, the first entries before the source of this poem were comments about the weather and the fact that my smartwatch was failing to load my daily swims to the app on my phone which monitors my progress.  I was wondering why the phone had only recorded that I had swum 200Km when, surely I must have swum more, when the cloud of cigarette smoke drifted my way and I picked up bag and tea and moved to a more distant table.
     It was after my displacement that I moaned a little more about the weather and began to think about the sky and what I expected from it - and that is how the poem got going.
     My less than flattering mention of the painter Jean Dubuffet stems from my one and only visit to the Guggenheim Museum in New York.  This building is one that I have known about ever since I was a kid and had a Sunday Times (in the days when the paper was worth reading) poster of architecture.  This had a few drawings of two buildings by Frank Lloyd Wright, one was the Kaufmann house in Bear Run, Pennsylvania and another was the museum in New York.  I have been fascinated with the architect and especially with these two buildings since that time and you can imagine that I was excited finally to visit one of my key architectural sites and especially to see the art it contained.  
     Of all the artists having a special exhibition that could have been there, Dubuffet would not have been in my top few hundred artists.  But there he was in awful painting after awful painting!  I hated them.  I hate them.  The exhibition was in 1981 - which shows you how long my resentment can last!  And I want to go back and enjoy a better exhibition!  Some day.
     Anyway, it was good to remember my trip to the US of A and one day I am determined to go and see Falling Water for myself, as the Guggenheim is the only Frank Lloyd Wright building that I have seen in the flesh.

Expectation

Downwind of smokers

I soon moved away,

and tutting silently

I looked upwards,

as sky always

returns

a glance.

            But not today.

Today the sky is chaos.

No touch of the sublime.

A random scattering

of dirty-bluey-greys.

All childish smudges,

daubs: Dubuffet – failed!

Half-hearted, full of thumbs.

Half-finished messiness,

that smears against my eyes.

But I persist,

and gaze, and find

acceptable abstraction

in the view,

            and make

a metaphor to tidy things

and justify the look.

I like to think that the last stanza and the last lines of the previous stanza can be taken to refer to Dubuffet as well as the sky.  In conjunction with the title, I think that there is something in this poem about making the most of what you see however uninspiring it might appear at first glance!  After all 'abstraction' is a taking out - and that process is up to the individual and the effort made to make something of it.

     

St David's Day, and I rediscovered the little flower sent to me by Dianne (with proceeds going to the Marie Curie Cancer Fund) to mark my national day.
     This is not the first time that I have written a poem about what St David's Day might mean for me, but I did not set out today to write a poem about identity.  The real impetus was the lifeguard who shook my wet hand just before I went in for my swim.  I was strangely moved by the fact that some random Catalan actually knew the significance of the day!
     My mother was notorious for her emotional reaction to things ranging from film of Margot Fonteyn dancing sublimely to Labrador puppies in the Andrex adverts.  No matter how crass the appeal to emotion, my mother would duly emote!  I find myself following her easy emotional involvement and am a sucker for what I find emotionally compelling - and believe me it doesn't take something as overwhelming as Bruckner's Seventh to reduce me to a quivering wreck!  So, I do not trust my emotional reactions to things, when my reason is telling me that the quiver is too glib to be convincing.  But, as the person who knew he had a persecution complex said, "It doesn't stop people persecuting me!" in the same way, knowing that I am easily moved doesn't mean that I am not moved!  Which is basically my explanation and justification for the end of the poem!
     Perhaps in twenty years time I will have sufficient poems to form the basis for a short monograph on the subject of St David's Day and what it might mean for a monoglot English speaker living abroad!

Hardy annual

I couldn’t find a red

so wore a blue.

At least it showed up well –

though people must have wondered

why I chose, today, to wear a

flower, artificial, small, discrete –

as far as yellow, bright,

against a background,

dark, can be subdued.

I tell those who I know by sight

that it’s my national day.

A concept that they understand

though theirs, with ‘English’ irony

(that we think’s just our own),

commemorates defeat, complete, defining –

which strangely gave new life.

They have a mythic saint

the English, share as well.

What does mine mean?  To me?

And here and now?

Perhaps the questions asked,

answer themselves?

The ‘struggle’ with identity

pricks only when a gaudy

daffodil in pinned into my shirt.

Turning from the shower

to the pool to start my swim,

a lifeguard smiles and offers me his hand,

unprompted, shaking mine, “¡Felicidades!

For your special day!” he says.

No daffodil, just skin.  He knows.

And I was moved.

Maybe no more than maudlin

sentiment, but something,

obviously, I recognized. 

And was there

water in my eyes before

I actually dived in!

I feel that this poem will undergo a few revisions before I am fully satisfied with what I was trying to say.  The structure is fluid at the moment and perhaps it might be well to tighten it up.

   The blue pencil calls!

As is sometimes traditional on a Thursday, there is a poem which was started in the Wednesday evening meeting of the Barcelona Poetry Group.
     The theme this week was Mortality and the discussion was lively and interesting.
     The idea, or the memory for this poem came when another member of the group was describing digging up her dead hamster to find out if it had, in accordance with the faith of her parents, resurrected.  It hadn't, though her memory is carefully blank about what she actually found in the buried box!
     My poem has absolutely nothing to do with dead hamsters or lapsed Mormon faith, but it probably says something profound about my brain processes that such an anecdote should bring up my memory of jumping off a bus.  Almost!
     I can still re-live the experience: the horror of knowing that the best you can expect is a serious accident; the time-stopping trick at the moment of crisis; the exultation of survival.  All of those are at my memory's beck and call.  And the realisation that the whole incident must have been over in less than two seconds!
     Although there have been a number of drafts of this poem, the original structure is preserved and this is one of those rare works where the narrative, feeling and meaning flowed together.
     I still don't really know how "I stopped, upright" but I am very glad that it did, in spite of the vague sense of underlying invulnerability that I think it added to my character!

Crossing

It was not when I was knocked down.

No.  That was bump and bruise –

and tears of course.  But that

was accident, not what you’d call

The Smirk of Death. 

No, those fell words for me were,

out from school, and number 30 bus.

The bus was open deck, with pole –

unthinkable in these strict

Health & Safety days.

It didn’t really stop at my true stop.

There was a crossing and, mostly,

the bus would pause

with time enough for me to leave.

There was a gap.  I,

hand on pole, stepped off.

The bus accelerated and I,

. . .  and I, as if in Ten League Boots

took giant steps until,

in that split-second age that

stretches from a life to nothingness,

I saw my hand and told myself,

quite calmly (as it seemed to me)

just to, “Let go.”

The hand responded,

though momentum bumped me

dancingly, until I stopped, upright,

and watched oblivion drive quickly

up the Newport Road.

Breathless. 

Uninjured.

Startled. 

I was alive. 

Wiser?

Who can tell?

Perhaps it needed blood

to strengthen faith that

Death would come for all.

Perhaps I’ve lived my life

as if I’ll always

see the hand, and speak.

My "true stop" was The Carpenter's Arms, although the bus actually stopped outside the Esso garage.  Both have been demolished: the garage became a video store and the pub, a metro outlet of Sainsbury - nothing remains the same, except the memory described in the poem.  That will never change.

As always, any responses will be welcomed!