Rip

1.
It was a day whose hard heat drew me seawards.
Through the town, over the bridge to that line
of coast swerving round to the Rip, the lighthouse.
Out from the shore, reefs of kelp shifted.
I entered a swaying channel walled in
by oxblood bracken such as I'd shaken
the week before into a cloud of sea-lice.
Tentacles of light speared turbid green
where I rolled in a patch of shallow surf —
feeling tamed, reluctantly safe.
And so, dreaming of crabs and jellyfish,
I drifted till suddenly closer to
the horizon, seeking a path back over
that field of leathery algae and eelgrass.
2.
If I swam across, swam towards the lighthouse,
I could reach clear water, wade in to shore
with unstung legs, a steady heart… Next,
the minutes I cannot give shape to,
as I was taken beyond my depth, my strength —
sideswiped by the sea — to become a cypher
in stretched crystal. A struggle amidst lift,
fracturing surge, to reach dazed knowledge
and recognise panic — then the gap
before I called out, could find the will
to want to be saved: my mouth a spluttering
cave, my body losing form — arms
too embroiled in crosscurrents to wave at
those watchers beyond broken lace.
3.
Now I know what it is like to look back
at a shore I might not walk on again.
But there was the journey in, breathless,
slipping from a surfboard towed by a girl
paddling us both over jagged swells.
Was it the king tides or the westerlies,
creating that iron pull? Next day
I would learn of them — and later,
of the drowning here at this beach, this summer.
When I had stood for a long time, breathing
my body back into self-possession,
gazing, under a bone-white sun, at
unstoppable waves, the unanswering sea,
I gave thanks and turned home.