Swimming On and On

The sun is warm but the breeze is still chilly as I sit on the wooden steps and watch the sea. There are many trails of footprints leading down to the water's edge and back but they are all my own.

It is just warm enough to swim in the sea and I swim on and on, sometimes thinking, sometimes arranging and rearranging words and images in my mind and sometimes just emptying my mind and becoming the sound of the waves and the sensation of cold water moving over skin.

Sometimes, though, I cannot avoid looking up at the half moon in the blue sky and reflecting on my own incompleteness. I am wistful but also very mindful of the small pleasures that so often make me smile.

I realise that am starting to feel old; just small physical changes happening like the dry ticking of clock but adding, a little, to my sense of melancholia. As usual, I smile at myself and float above such thoughts. We are all dragged along by deep currents and, swim as powerfully as we like, we know that we have to make the best of what we have and, on the whole, I am content. Indeed, I live a life that would be the envy of so many so I must get up, ignore the stiffness in my ankle and set about making something of this glorious day.

I will put the kettle on the strove to make some coffee and remind myself of the words of a Chinese poet famed for drinking more intoxicating liquid:

"Before life's dregs are drained, there are still some glasses!"