The Cleansing.
A Poem about Wild Sea Swimming.
A compulsion,
A pull,
A call
To the sea.
I enter, and frozen knives try to drive me back to shore.
I’m unworthy, yet, and I must prove myself.
**
But I panic, I flinch, shoulders rise to my ears.I am afraid.
I push on, lowering my resistant human skin into a murk of green.
I jump up again, taking a moment to breathe.
I force my unwilling self into a purgatory.
This is a cleansing of the mind, of the earthly body,
And I must accept the pain to purge the flesh.
The sea waits.
‘Prove yourself,’ it whispers,
Taunting me with it’s steady rhythm.
And so I plunge into the frigid waters
Giving up my fears and my human resistance.
The sea accepts me, and the cleansing can begin.
**
A dark moody sky
Mirrors the mercurial mood of the sea.
A restless need to churn and change,
Destroy and damage
Lurks in the energy of the molecules.
For now, the watery god only grumbles
As I push my way through
Small waves.
The gift of buoyancy encourages me to stay a while.
This temperamental deity soothes my bitten skin with numbness.
I can no longer feel the cruel knives,
And I am comfortable in this saline world
Providing I keep moving my fragile human limbs.
**
But his time is precious,
And soon he drives me to shore.
I am tired and satifsfied,
Purged of the burdens of a human body.
Purged of fatigue and pain.
Purged of the racing thoughts of worry and fear.
For now at least.
**
I have been blessed. Baptised, by the cold water,
And as I once again feel the burden of gravity
While I walk up the sand,
I look back, and nod to the salty god
Who helped me forget for a while.
**
For all of you who know and value the healing power of the cold sea.