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.

With the present heat wave, or normal summer as we term it in Spain, there is sometimes and almost irresistible impulse to go into our outdoor public/private pool and cool off.  There are supposed to be lights around the pool, but they are more often off than on, and even when they are on they only half work.  This means that the pool, outside the hours of normal use, is more of a black space than a welcoming facility.
     But temptation is there to give in to, to hell with Puritan reserve, and swimming at night is something which always surprises by the fact that the water is still warm and there is something magical about swimming alone, in darkness.
     Our pool is often the centre of what can only be termed cacophony and night time is the only time that you get something approaching silence.  Admittedly, there is the sound of kids (no matter what the time of night), television and radio - to say nothing of all the other types of electronic methods of noise production that our neighbours seem to have mastered.  But there is a tranquility which is deepened by darkness.
     On two sides of the pool are houses and on the other two sides there are houses and flats - though they are further away, so there is always slight spilling from un-curtained windows.
     It was while swimming in darkness, not blackness; away from and yet visually near to so many other people that the idea for the poem came to me.
     I swim every day, and usually try and complete my metric mile, but being in a dark pool was different.  I was not wearing my glasses, so there was that element of seeing and not seeing that informs so much of my observation.  There was also the fact that the pool is a public space, but at night there is a sort of privacy about the darkness which is at odds with its position.
     There is an element of the voyeur in this poem; of being able to see while remaining unseen which struck me.

Dark pool

Unseen ripples roll faint light

(that bleeds, insidious,

from isolated window-screens)

and drowns a dappled net

of dimness strong enough

to tangle bathers

in the liquid night.

Pale arteries of faded trees

bleach out to alveoli bunched

against a moon-robbed sky

with stars’ suggestions

lurking at the edge of sight.

One public globe slews

globs of floating light to

smudge the surface

in a gesture almost

natural and painterly.

I do not swim.

The noise of water

sucked and dropped

by moving arms and feet

would be, I might suggest,

immodest,

in this private gloom.

I laze in darkness,

hardly moving, held

within a distant-light-surrounded

empty space where eyes

are stopped by brightness

on the other side of glass

where life plays on

with licence,

unobserved –

except by me.

This poem has taken a number of drafts.  This is something which I found surprising because the notes for the poem seemed to flow so easily.

     For me, the most interesting element in the poem is the use of the word 'immodest' in the ante-penultimate section.  I am still thinking about my use of that word.

The notes I made after my morning swim today were of even more than usual banality, with my thoughts concentrating on the fact that the refill in my collapsable pen seemed disinclined to stay in place!  
     I commented on the fact that the swim app on my phone, which is linked to my smart watch, has decided recently to let me know how far I have swum on a daily, aggregated basis.  I noted how lucky I was to have a whole lane to myself when the rest of the swimming pool was a writhing, pullulating mass of bodies: I felt like a member of the IOC making my unfettered way to the London Olympics able to ignore the surrounding stationary traffic!
     While writing this rubbish I was, as is my want, sitting in the full sunshine.  Nothing in this country so clearly shows that you are not native than sitting in the sun when not actually sunbathing by the beach - and even then it is customary to lurk under a parasol!
     Today, like lots of near yesterdays, it has been very hot and I (remembering my First Aid in English) was perspiring freely.  It was at this point that I drew my index finger's crooked sweep and flung the accumulated sweat (sorry, perspiration: horses sweat; men perspire; women glow) on to the ground.  I hasten to add that I was sitting outside (remember the sun?) and alone, so offended nobody.
     I did notice the pattern that the perspiration made and that was the start of rather more productive notes and the genesis of the following poem.

This short poem is an account of a fairly ordinary incident, and it starts in a fairly neutral descriptive way.  From the third line of the poem and the mention of constellations, it attempts to progress into something which links to concepts of time and space.  The last verse with the combination of words like gone, nothing left and suggest, give a fairly negative feel to the poem and perhaps points towards a final eschatological ending.

Heat

An index finger’s crooked sweep

across sweat-wetted forehead

scooping drops to fling some

crazy constellations on the hot cement.

Where, even as you try

to find familiarity in the

momentary, aleatory

(so much could be just like The Plough)

systems boil away

into indifferent space.

Even the supernovae

of something more

than shallow blots,

fail to survive

beyond a blink.

And then they’re gone.

With nothing left

to suggest

that they were
ever there.

As with a number of my recent poems, this one was started in one of the Wednesday meetings of the Barcelona Poetry Group that I attend.  The theme for the evening was Heroes & Villians, and the present poem grew out of a consideration of the concept of the 'fatal flaw' that Aristotle suggested was an essential ingredient in the make up of a tragic hero.
     I think that there is an element of something which has figured in other of my poems, the growing concern with age about what you have achieved.  Perhaps it is a sort of consolation to look back on the 'heroes' from the teaching in my youth and look at the way that all the Great Figures that it was suggested that we might look up to and take as our guides have been systematically debunked.  Livingstone, Nightingale, Churchill, Baden-Powell all have been subject to greater scrutiny and the fuller picture of their achievements and their character oddities has lessened their attraction - though it has made them much more human!
     So that I think that the poem is a combination of initial awe, followed by a sense of inadequacy, culminating in a membership of that group of boys that Golding so forcefully presented in Lord of the flies as they danced around the fire chanting Kill the pig!  And which resulted in the death of the 'saintly' character of Simon.
     The poem does not suggest that the suave and confident people are necessarily blameless, but it does suggest that it is easier to draw / a finger's cutting edge and participate in the destruction of public character and move right on than accept that the major flaw might be in oneself.

Fatal Flaw

They stand, these people,

suave and confident: complete.

A wall of seeming competence

that blocks the gaze.

They force all thoughts to centre –

on a ragged nail which snags

and nags and tips your poise

to mumbled, furtive nibblings;

where all attempts to

teeth-trim roughness fail.

Frustration cuts short patience;

keratin is torn to quick and blood.

Better, by far, to draw

a finger’s cutting edge

along doubt’s shadow

darkening the public face

and watch flayed reputations

curl and sink to dust.

It’s simple then to lick

the red away and

move right on.

As always any comments will be appreciated.