sea swim

A new poem by Andrew McMillan.

it was the easiest I’d felt undressing
at least sober that quickfound intimacy
of you shimmying from your dress into costume
me unprepared in yfronts I could already
feel my body pulled down with the weight of years
it had lived through you were almost the other side
of your sixties and you were beautiful
walking slowly to the edge through the foam
and out into the open water cold waves
breaking at our ankles then our stomachs
then diving in even though it was flatcalm
that morning you could still feel the power
in the pulling back after twenty minutes
we decided to walk the length of the beach
to dry ourselves as you described how the sea
heaves the beach around shifts its borders
we passed the house the tide pulls closer every year
metres of rock hewn off tossed away you showed me
the trees lopsided from the cliff fall roots
upturned and hardened like a fossilised
crustacean we talked life and love and Brexit
I wondered if one day the people of that house
would wake to find their lives capsizing we talked
politics your recent widowhood we passed
a nudist maybe in his eighties
his muscle fallen into itself arse shining
in the sun time will make all things feel slow
but the changes will be brutal

Andrew McMillan’s prize-winning debut collection, physical, is published by Jonathan Cape. This poem was commissioned for the “Crossing Borders” series as part of the International Literature Showcase, an initiative run by Writers’ Centre Norwich and the British Council to support UK writers.