Poem for the month

selected by David Underdown, who provides the footnote

The Last Swim

by Michael Laskey

September, October … one thing
you don’t know at the time is when
you’ve had your last swim: the weather
may hold, may keep nudging you in.

Only afterwards, sometimes days on,
it dawns on you that you’ve done:
just the thought of undressing outdoors,
exposing bare skin, makes you wince.

And that’s best, to have gone swimming
easily to the end: your crawl
full of itself, and the future
no further than your folded towel.

‘The Last Swim’ unfolds as a single simple but extended metaphor for life, and death. Michael Laskey is a poet who draws on the familiar and domestic – ‘Mending a Puncture’, ‘Firelighters’ – but finds deeper resonances beneath the surface of ordinary things. He founded the Aldeburgh Poetry Festival (coming up in November, details at www.thepoetrytrust.org).

This poem is taken from ‘The Man Alone: New and Selected Poems’ published by Smith/Doorstop Books.