Gone swimmin'

Penbryn beach

 Another look at my relationship with water.

How she calls

She thirsts for me

and she calls,

whispers my name -

                come dance,

sometimes loud -

                come dive,

sometimes soft -

                come breathe.

Lapping with little slappings

to suggest, persuade,

she draws the undertow

so I feel the overthrow

arriving and departing

leaving and returning,

spreading her susurration

far away and close by

turn by turn

tide by tide

surge and suck,

pull in, come swim,

                dance in me,

so calls mother sea.

This poem was first published (Oct 2017) here: https://visualverse.org/images/leio-mclaren/

It is now part of my third poetry collection, 'Before we Breathe' (all about my relationship with the sea, especially the Cardigan Bay coast. Pub 2021 by The Littoral Press)

I am water

Wild swimming... aaaaah!

I am water

When the sun is harsh

in the afternoon,

I kneel

to scoop cool water.

How fresh it is

and full in my throat,

going down. I pull it in,

feel the cleanness, the greenness

fill all my cells.

And so this lake reaches for me,

laps me, sucks me,

clasps me into itself,

folds my heart in its currents,

where somehow I will breathe,

move freely, and wonder

Where I come from,

where I will go.

I swim wild in peace,

allow the lake to swallow me.

Tiny fish flicker

around my naked flesh

as water murmurs to me its secret stories,

makes music flow over my body

and into me.

This is my beginning and ending,

my place of depart and return,

the to and fro

lapping the shore,

sipping me,

wanting me more.

            Where I come from,

            where I will go.

Joy in the beck

I've dug up an old poem that maybe says something about the joy of wild swimming, although it's about other stuff too!

Joy in the beck                            

                Over tough rock and through soft earth

                                the river creates her own course

as she runs and rests by turns

                                                from her tiny bubbling source.

                Where the pool of ideas whirls

we are suspended in her being

                                feeling only the bliss of the swim,

                we twist and spin without seeing.

Know the thrill of the stream in flood

 --  deep, dark and endless.

                                Hold faith in her safety as

she falls and bends,  grows careless.

Feel the water-silk embrace,

                                the power of the raging torrent

                                                The river is the breath we seek

as we run in the race of the current.

                                To dive, to swim

                                                to dance in her flow

                 is to trust all the dreams

                                                                we ever seek to know.