Having taken on the challenge to wild swim every day for a month, I found myself reflecting on the web of emotions that flow through me when I go for a cold-water dip. This poem emerged about the personal journey I take each time I go in the water and how powerful I find it to my wellbeing.

Nervous dread,
Echoes in my head,
“Go back to bed.”
Yet, instead,

I steel myself, to steal away.
Braving unenticing grey.
Into steely depths, I breathe my way,
And everything else just falls away.

To feel elated, to feel alive,
To feel invincible with each dive.
Life on land quickly washes off,
With each aquatic peak and trough.

Suspended in time, the shore must wait,
As mind and body in heightened state,
Are absorbed by fierce intensity,
Humbled by the ocean’s immensity.

Or slick with golden-hour gloss,
I’m wonder-stricken and at a loss.
To adequately convey the feeling,
Revealing, concealing, healing, squealing.

Each wave, each set, each turning tide,
A new start and chance to come untied.
In endless repetition of ebb and flow,
Reliably familiar yet distinctly so.

Mighty wrath yet deeply calming,
Tension trigger and yet disarming.
Contradictions reconciled,
I am unravelled, my spirit wild.

Buzzing with angst and addictive yearn,
To feel the numbing freeze and burn.
To be floating yet grounded,
Wrapped in silk or pounded.

My faith abounds,
In the power of the sea.
To pin me down,
To set me free.