Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

Taking the new length as back-stroke, I find myself
thinking of my father, how we used to wade through steam
and paddle in a sauna pool where icicles clung to wooden vents.
Not here. Father is drowned to the world, and a large ripple
forces chlorine into my nostrils, my throat, as I begin to flail
half-way to the end of the eleventh, late November sunlight
on my struggling neck as I flip, improvise with breast-stroke,
anything to get me safe against blue concrete and warn swirls.

Father would have propelled himself from the deep end,
strolled to that pale kit-bag and arched towel over shoulders:
the let-loose of a sigh, the tousle of a receding hair-line,
then the reach for spectacles and a welcome return to sight.
Next a look for me, a brief query of the eyebrows to suggest
it is time, the icicles are extending, but not yet long enough
to prevent the son’s ascent of the rough-finished ladder,
a precarious rise to the warped iron slide, whereupon
there would be a brief scud over chill ramp and then heat
everywhere, immersed in bubbles, mouth embracive of air,
easing up the gradient to accept a thick reassurance of towel.

Not now. I watch the other swimmers, mostly older--
caps tight, goggles a blend of resilience and exhaustion,
quick shoves for another length with no defeated necks.
There is someone with them, a good friend, or the belief
that when they return home a voice will rise from corners--
asking them if it was pleasant, not too crowded, whether cramp
sent them near the depths only to be rewarded with tea,
conversation and bright hopes brought to the lap of every, all.

Never me. Goggles twisted, air passages enflamed, I dread
the moment when I must pull myself from this communal liquid,
and stride the distance to the changing rooms: not because
of self-awareness, although that dimly, but from a time when
                                                                                         father
would have smothered it aside, with vigorous strokes controlled
my fringe, my evenings, my life towards adolescence with care.
Not after. After is this, fully-grown, well-honed, neither of the
                                                                                        two:
waiting for an opening, a beautiful time when no hostile arms
block my escape, and I might slouch into privacy unnoticed:

towel, folded clothes, hair-drier each set in their allocated
                                                                                     place,
hopeful for the quiet intrusion of his much-missed hands.