I AM THE CHRISTMAS SEA
24th December 2014
From my book of poems and songs, To Marloes with Love
I wake to a bright calm dawn.
Hearing the ocean calling across silent frost-furred fields,
I hurriedly get dressed,
Sure that those sunrise colours promise a perfect morning.
They aren’t up yet; this suits the plan: I make preparations while the kettle boils.
Bringing them tea in bed, I ask about visiting The Sands… Nicely, but persuasively too:
‘And, if we go early, which would suit the tide, we might have the beach to ourselves!’
Two miles of wild shore.
I make us a fast breakfast, just juice and crumpets and bananas;
As soon as I’m done, out I dash to start Dad’s engine and scrape his icy screen.
It smiles on us, the luck we’ve made for ourselves:
When I halt, breath jumpy and heart pumpy, at that point on the path
Where you can at last see the whole strand,
There’s not a footprint anywhere on that sun-stared sand;
And, just as my ears had promised me they would,
The waves crumping ashore look huge fun, without being frightening.
After sprinting to the tideline, I apparently welly about aimlessly along the foamy edge,
Whilst actually assuring myself that the sun’s warm enough and the waves aren’t too strong.
Decided, I deliberately hang back, pretending that limpets suddenly interest me…
And, ‘Yes!’, off they head southwards, attracted by the high tide wrack line, assuming I’ll catch up.
But I’ve been checking which barnacly bluff makes the best changing place –
And there is where I now leave my backpack, boots, socks, coat, sweater, shirt, jeans…
No hesitation: straight into the shining sea, at the splashing run –
And the playful water coming to meet me is so superbly crashy,
Such massive and immediate fun,
I never give its temperature a thought.
Knowing I must do it soon, I choose: ‘THIS IS THE ONE!’
A breaker bigger than me; meaning that if, as it arrives, I don’t do a huge leap
To arc over its crest, I have to dive…
Air ingasped, I spear myself under.
Opening eyes immediately…
Oh, the beauty of winter waves, each a green-glowing gale-gust
Sweeping across the sun-dappled sand in a silver-spiralled dance of bubbles!
I start to swim out deeper, head twisting about so I miss nothing,
Determined to stay submerged as long as I possibly can:
There’s so much to delight me down here, so much to remember!
Eventually, breath all used,
I can’t any more ignore my lungs:
I kick myself up a sparkling sunbeam
And burst gasping into a swaying world of snow-bright fizz.
Bobbing about in it, ducking giggling through each glass-clear rushing crest,
I start to cackle with Christmas glee because, I’m sure of it,
So absolutely sure that I shout it to the blue-hung gulls above,
‘THIS IS MY BEST SWIM EVER!!!’
Why?
Because today, in this joyous tumult, I understand
As I never have before
That I was born a Nature-creature.
Indeed, I feel so at one with these winter waves, it’s as if I didn’t run into the water from the land,
But swam shorewards from a secret sea-home,
Far out there and down so deep,
To play here where the swell meets the sand.
Could that land-life have been a dream?
Was I brought up in this water-world?
So it seems, the way that each time I leap with a wave at just the right moment,
Like a powerful playmate it familiarly grasps my body…
And that lovely strength I trust sluices me forward,
Transformed into a whooping bobsleigh
As I go hurtling down another steep foam-slope,
Thrilled all over by the tickling prickles of myriad bubblebursts.
I’ve become part of this winter water:
Sharing so much joy
Now I’ve learned to play its games,
I am the Christmas Sea.
© Christopher Jessop 2014