Swim

They call it ‘wild swimming’, the activity of swimming in open water now widely promoted for its health giving properties, presumably to distinguish it from simply ‘swimming’, which is what happens in the pool at the sports centre. Yet before the advent of such pools all swimming was ‘wild’. And it seems to have been men and boys who liked to take a dip in the river, lake, sea. Usually done naked, it must have been an invigorating, convivial experience.

The American photographer and painter, Thomas Eakins (1844-1916), took some photographs of students bathing, then did the famous painting, ‘The Swimming Hole’ (1884-5).

Study for ‘The Swimming Hole’

Thomas Eakins ‘The Swimming Hole’ 1884-5

And the English painter, Henry Scott Tuke (1858-1929), who spent most of his life in Cornwall, is best known for his pictures of local youths bathing and messing about in boats.

Henry Scott Tuke ‘Ruby, Gold, Malachite’ 1902

Henry Scott Tuke ‘Morning Splendour’ 1921

Such frolics were strictly men only. It was not seemly for women to witness such events or even to indulge in swimming themselves. But when sea bathing became popular in the mid 19thC in South Coast resorts such as Brighton and Bognor Regis because of its reputed health benefits, women took to it. They got changed in ‘bathing machines’, little huts on wheels which were pushed into the shallows, from which they could modestly descend into the brine. Thus ‘the most refined female is enabled to enjoy the sea with the strictest delicacy.’

Gently does it…

Now, however, it seems that ‘wild swimming’ is a pastime led in the main by women, all part of the ‘wellness’ and exercise trend to assert their equality to men in fitness and physical prowess. On the North Sea shores around my place I have seen such groups in companionable solidarity skip down the beach for a sea swim. A hardy bunch they are, the sea here being close to freezing at the best of times.

One band of half a dozen or so meets in a little cove where the beach slopes conveniently down into a small bay. They doff their changing robes, don their rubber caps and make for the waves, a veritable pod of sturdy ladies plunging into the chilly waters. I think they call themselves the Blue Tits.

*

My own sea swimming has taken place in balmier waters…a lake in the Dordogne, a Mediterranean beach in Spain and, more sensuously, in the deliciously cool clear sea off the western shores of Corfu.

The sub-heading of the poem is from the wonderful REM song, ‘Night Swimming’ which recalls a summer night of skinny dipping with all its echoes of love and loss

Night Swimming
   (deserves a quiet night)

….to go night swimming when
the inky Ionian slides into the sky

 ….to swim in the rich night
in liquid aquamarine with
     sea jewels sapphire azure and gold

 ….to be glazed by the cool current,
my turns and twists and flicks just
     gestures in the dance of the waves

 ….to surrender to this other that
sleeves me and enslaves me,
     embracing and escaping in one kiss

 ….to rise, rinsed and weightless,
my skin skinned
     and the deep night dipping
into a soundless sea.

*

‘Entering the water’ is a colourless phrase used by the authorities, often the police, usually as a prelude to news of an unfortunate drowning…through falling, being pushed or washed away, jumping or simply walking into the sea with no intention of coming back. ‘He was seen entering the water at 6am by a local dog walker…’

But ‘entering’ doesn’t have to imply tragedy. It can suggest going through some kind of portal, even an invitation, to another world. For in entering the sea, the lake, the river, even the ‘swimming hole’, you are immersing yourself in another element which you become part of and which, even momentarily, even in your dreams only, has a power to transform you.

The Water

He stood at the water’s edge in the cool dusk
and watched the reflections shifting this way and that,
none that he could grasp,
taking wing as they did, dissolving in air.

He listened to the water’s language,
its syllables lisping to its own wavelength,
the story half-told in a different tongue,
a reminiscence breaking among reeds.

He drew in the water’s breath, tasted the cold tang of it
and somewhere the spray of his journey,
the ebb and swell of memory
as he searched among echoes of the wind.

He knelt and put his hand in the water.
It slunk round his fingers like a glove
and he felt the green depth soft as skin
that opened into words at his touch.

The silver waves kept their distance
but he heard their whisper, ‘Come closer, come in.’
He saw himself entering the water,
staring back, solitary, fracturing,

until the waves danced round him, scattering sky.
He saw the one become two, remembered the promise,
as they reached out and circled each other,
riding the current, entwined in liquid light.