Ideas Whereas Swimming – by Claudia Cummins

I dreamt of sunshine, a granulated palm of it 
being poured into the water.
I've dreamt earlier than, however not like this.
As regular, I head out for a day of swimming. 
Others are right here too, arrowing 
their arms into the waves,
a lifetime of chasing something of forex.

For too lengthy I've revelled
within the exhaustion of motion, 
within the dance of doing, of doing, of doing.
I'm all the time craving to be finished, 
but it surely by no means ends, on the tip of an finish 
I uncover extra to be finished.

I really feel it, the same old present that arrives 
within the stretch of the day.
A slice of toast crumbles in my abdomen.
My behavior is to push previous it,
to proceed chasing the brightness 
of a lighthouse. To name it exhausting work.

The dream returns to me once more.
And my chest breaths open a chance. 
I cease, gently I flip to drift on my again.
A again ironed by boiled hours of time.
The water feels calmer now.
How stunning, how tender.
And, oh sky, what a website to behold!
Your floating foams of milk.
Forgive my forgetting of you, 
the small seconds that slipped 
into busyness.

Light arrives loud as birds.
It's saying one thing to me, it tells me 
that the sandcastles I've spent years constructing, 
they want a window, an area 
for peace, and laughter, and stillness 
to ripple in.

~ Theresa Lola
From the podcast Strangers on a Bench