Tag Archives: swimming

RHL, ‘How Sweet It Is’

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To be loved by you is like floating on my back,
falling asleep in the sea’s slack.
Sometimes. Sometimes it is more unnerving,
leaping with a wave for bodysurfing,
being swept facedown up the beach,
hair and ears full of sand.
That too is love, and grand.
Sometimes, again, I hope for more that’s out of reach –
(and you do too – don’t glower!)
and sometimes we get gifts hard to believe,
dolphins swimming with us half an hour
till mutually we and they
just turn away,
they to sea and we to shore,
and then they come back suddenly once more
and leap, so close, and leap, and leap again… and leave.

All those are in “loved by” –
the calm; the turbulent rift,
the sparkling fizz,
the sudden unexpected gift.
What can I say? I couldn’t, wouldn’t, choose to deny
how sweet it is.

*****

Thirty-five years with Eliza and still going strong. Who knew.

‘How Sweet It Is’ was published in the current Snakeskin.

“Free sea summer scenery background image” by Ajda Gregorčič is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

Sonnet: “And Then You Die”

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And then you die. So what have you achieved?
Your house, your place of work, both turn to dust.
You’re honoured? But who’s on a marble bust
none knows or cares, or if the honour’s thieved.
You cheated? Centuries later, none’s aggrieved.
You fought for Freedom? But in history’s dust
no war is seen as necessary or just.
You were a saint? None cares what you believed.
Why all this striving, more than to survive?
Millennia hence a random rubbish heap
will be more studied than your claimed success.
So find a sunny sea, be calm, alive,
swim, then float on your back and fall asleep.
Life can be no more perfect; death no less.

This sonnet was published in Snakeskin a couple of weeks ago. I was very happy with its formal Petrarchan rhyme scheme, until I suddenly noticed, reading it for the umpteenth time, that I had used the word “dust” twice in the rhymes. Given the enormous number of alternatives I could have chosen from, I’m a little embarrassed. All I can say is, the word just seemed so natural, in both places…

But, in the spirit of the poem, so what? The swimming is lovely today!