I’ll keep drinking and swimming
until the big one engulfs and submerges me
way out at sea; keep swimming. It’s a cliche
that the waters are cold and indifferent.
Keep swimming in the milieu of living things.
Keep breathing in the oxygen above them,
Keep moving until you realise there’s land
on neither side of the blue that engulfs us.
Now’s not the time, though blind, in weather
markedly colder, to study departure times.
Keep swimming beyond the populous shoreline,
beyond the socially rarefied,
as though the sand they’re on
(composed of refined grains)
is an altogether different form of powder,
a substance to emulate,
conferring an exalted status on the sinker,
that they would become ‘sinking consultants.’
“Rearrange the granules so as to yield
a veritable mudslide of maturing investments,
providing a sand-rich sinking retirement.”
“Don’t contemplate the water. Don’t swim in it;
there’s no life outside the sandcastles.
The bigger you make them the more impressive
they seem to other builders and your children.”
“Wealth’s relative, but there’s no solidity in water,
no landmass on the other side or solid ground
beneath you. You sink at sea and there’s nothing
for your children – no memory of anything.”
“We’ll manage your magnificent investments
in the temporal; the tides eliminate
the smaller structures at the water’s edge
but we’re a worldwide conglomerate,
offshore, dense and palpably stronger.
The water rarely touches us. We’re immune
to its enticements, your hunger for the ocean.
Cross the surf. Join us. You’ll sink more slowly,
elegantly disintegrate on fine material
in the country of the ‘work hard, play hard culture’
evidenced by the taxi rank, the ambulance
in the city centre, the strutting lads
with identikit haircuts (uniformly asymmetric
now) singing ‘Who let the dogs out?’
Those, like you, who take to the ocean
without flaying themselves on a record breaking
sojourn – six times around the world
on a pedalo, arriving back at Portsmouth
emaciated and the toast of South Today,
bumming around Cowes Week –
fade as the water gathers strength.
Keep swimming in the milieu of living things.
Keep breathing in the oxygen above them.
Keep moving until you realise there’s land
on neither side of the blue that engulfs us.
Wilderspool Causeway 