Lakeland Dipper 73

Home at Grasmere

Slipping into the water I closed my eyes and swam into the sun.
The bright evening sunlight reflected off the water and flickered across my eyelids.
I watched my arms push out quietly through the water and listened to my breath fill my lungs and breathed in the valley full of memories of G and P. 
Crying I turned and opened my eyes and the vivid brightness of the blues and greens of sky and fell interchanged and I hung in the middle of the lake in vertical suspension.

On my way back from a challenging day in Kirkby Londsdale and then Grange I had intended to do a further recce swim of Rydal but as I got to the shore a bloke fired up a drone so I walked across to Grasmere instead.

Breath by Don Paterson - translation of Rilke from 'Orpheus'

Breath, you invisible poem -
pure exchange, sister to silence,
being and its counterbalance,
rhythm wherein I become,
ocean I accumulate
by stealth, by the same slow wave;
thriftiest of seas... Thief
of the whole cosmos! What estates,
what vast spaces have already poured
through my lungs? The four winds
are like daughters to me.
So do you know me, air, that once sailed through me?
You, that were once the leaf and rind
of my every word?