ATLANTIC
The trick is to launch yourself flatwise, to fly, as it were,
like in those childhood dreams where you’d long-belly over
grass and hedges, fences and trees. Do this without thought
or prevarication. The intention is to beat straight into it,
clean as a pin through the cold salt-scrubbing green.
Cold unbolts and unlocks, unscrews all that’s been
holding you tight for so long. On your back now, hanging still
like a dead one, buoyant, heart knocking. Keel over, kick heels,
crawl, churn, arm over arm, splice like a shark,
slice like a double-sided windmill. Switch to backstroke,
breast, a ladling scoop, head below and up, then slow
dog-paddle. Wade out, thigh deep, preceded by your shadow,
a perfect dark replica of yourself climbing from the olive drab,
dragging seaweed, an ungainly lumber over hot stones, slab
footed on glittery sand, mica speckled, and slump, shocked
by gravity, by the dull dead thump of human weight.
© Pat Winslow
Winner of the Guernsey International Poetry Competition 2013
The trick is to launch yourself flatwise, to fly, as it were,
like in those childhood dreams where you’d long-belly over
grass and hedges, fences and trees. Do this without thought
or prevarication. The intention is to beat straight into it,
clean as a pin through the cold salt-scrubbing green.
Cold unbolts and unlocks, unscrews all that’s been
holding you tight for so long. On your back now, hanging still
like a dead one, buoyant, heart knocking. Keel over, kick heels,
crawl, churn, arm over arm, splice like a shark,
slice like a double-sided windmill. Switch to backstroke,
breast, a ladling scoop, head below and up, then slow
dog-paddle. Wade out, thigh deep, preceded by your shadow,
a perfect dark replica of yourself climbing from the olive drab,
dragging seaweed, an ungainly lumber over hot stones, slab
footed on glittery sand, mica speckled, and slump, shocked
by gravity, by the dull dead thump of human weight.
© Pat Winslow
Winner of the Guernsey International Poetry Competition 2013
