Read Poem: Swimming Backwards by Mark Mayes

The cold no longer mattered.
The sun was sinking into the sea.
Tan cliffs watched us.
The stony beach, emptied of middle-aged couples, dogs, us.

The cold no longer mattered.
The soft falling,
or the sudden drop
into the necessary shock of water.

The sea and sky and sun and land
owned their colours,
cannot be painted in words,
only by themselves.

The some clothes we wore
became a darkened skin,
and still the sun,
bleeding down the sky.

We swam to where
nothing met our gently kicking feet.
This is where I want to be,
where nothing is beneath.

And we adjusted ourselves
to the world, and it to us,
and the sun crying slowly into the horizon,
a burning orange at the limit of mind.

Something was pulling us out,
together and separately.
Side-current buffeted me into you,
into more us.

For a moment,
I considered going out there,
too far to return,
lush tiredness before the final struggle.

But then I saw you swimming backwards,
to the undefeatable urge to walk this life.
And I turned and headed for shore;
and the cold no longer mattered.