Lengths

Lengths

It occurs to me from time to time

That there must be a better way

My head emerging from the water

Grasping for the air

Lungs hurting and gasping

Breathless from the effort

Between tired strokes

Sometimes near choking

In the careless back-wash bow-wave

Of others beside me

Be-spectacled dolphins

Speeding through the swell

In their effortless freestyle

And that there are easier means

Than this daily immersion,

In stinging chlorine spray

To drag along an ungainly body

Through the crash and splash

Beyond the pain barrier

Of an aching, heaving chest

And exhausted arms and legs

Which soon lose their co-ordination

And any sense of rhythm

Between the lines of lanes

And ability to remain

On the straight and narrow

And that perhaps it’s all so pointless

This swimming end to end

The relentless back and forth

Of many measured lengths

To ignore the overwhelming urge

To simply stop and float awhile

Then sink slowly to the bottom

Amid the rising bubbles

To inspect the detail

And the regular pattern

Picked out on white and blue tiles

Whilst other bathers carry on regardless

And a lifeguard looks on in horror

At the body of a drowning man

Copyright Andy Fawthrop 2014