The Swimmer

You cannot see me without your glasses,

Your short-cropped hair is sticky wet,

Your eyes bright and watery,

You blink chlorine from them,

Goggles poised upon your head,

At the ready.

You swim slowly at first,

Tentatively dipping your head under,

A taste of the soft upside-down world,

Below the surface,

And then you move faster,

Straining against the liquid volume of the pool.

You would be weightless,

But you never learned to float.

Instead you swim like a fish,

Far, underneath and deep in the blue.

You are a smooth Ocean-Man,

It pumps through your seafaring blood,

The ancestral genes of Merchant Navy uncles,

The steady strokes,

Your palms cleaving the ripples and waves,

A graceful journey forward.

I am a wriggling creature in the water,

A panting Labrador swimming for a ball.

I splash and shoot off,

All haphazard directions, gulping chlorine,

Snorting out fluid, giggling and kicking,

Reasonless in this water-world.

But when I float, I hover,

Like a hypnotised Victorian,

A possessed child in the shallows,

I am oblivious, a drifting survivor,

A happy shipwrecked soul,

Moving with the current.

You wonder then, you ask ‘how?’

And yet each of your attempts,

Ends in a kick!

A stroke, a purposeful push forward.

I fear you will swim, but never float.

When you stop,

You crouch on the bottom of the pool,

To look out, straight at me,

A look of expectant apprehension,

On your lovely face.

From across the liquid landscape,

I wave and smile,

But you cannot see me without your glasses. 

By ClaraJean (2011)