Creative Corner #7

Winter Swim, Silent Pool

She swims lengths
And with each long, articulated stroke
The water and the air
Form knots across her coppiced back.
It flows with and against the grain,
Into the folds and the seams, and on,
And away again,
In an endless movement,
In an endless ritual loop,
She observes the rhythm
Of breathing and diving,
And kicking into the deep
Where, with eyes open,
She can see the void
Through which she moves.

Here she slows, suspended
In the ripples of blue,
At the lowest reach of her dive,
Until her lungs are punctured balloons,
And the loud thump
Of her heart in her chest,
Hauls her to the surface
In the wake of an air-filled squall.

In this upward movement
She is unaware
Of the man who has come to the pool-side
And stands looking down, with a smile
And a vacant stare,
But she understands,
As the first strand of hair
Breaks the prism and the silence,
That death stalks her,
Out on the red-brick streets,
And the underground trains
That thunder here and there,
That it lies somewhere between
Her distant friends, the deep water,
And the winter heath.