Late swim

Ullswater

'I feel I'm standing on a frozen pond
entranced by someone else below the ice,
a someone who has found out how to breathe
the water and endure the cold and dark.
I know I ought to turn my back. I can't.
I also know that if I just stay put
and watch the wax-white fingers flop about
I'll start to think they must be beckoning.
I stare and stare and stare and stare and stare ...'

[from Andrew Motion's 'Dead March']