Swimming the Consciousness of Long Lake by Normand Carrey & Flying and Failing by Jack Gilbert
Reflection by Normand Carrey
Dr. Normand Carrey
Kevin had asked me to submit a poem and I chose Jack Gilbert’s Flying and Failing but I also thought, what the heck, I’ll throw in one of my own; so hopefully Kevin will not regret his decision. I’ve been working on the poem for ten years now, perhaps longer, it’s one of those long suffering poems. I enjoy swimming but I can’t help but panic a little when I start thinking about how deep the Lake may be; I try to use my rational mind but the fear is always there, nudging me. And while the analogy between the water as a “Lake of twisting gravity” and the fear of drowning as opposed to water as the life-sustaining enveloping amniotic membrane may be obvious, I had not connected the two meanings together. It was not until I took my NBO and NBAS training and then dealing with babies emerging “fresh out of the womb” that suddenly the poem acquired that extra layer of meaning. I’ve been told that newborns naturally don’t have a fear of water until they get older.
Normand Carrey is a psychiatrist in Halifax, Nova Scotia
Swimming the Consciousness of Long Lake by Normand Carrey
By Normand Carrey
There’s a lake close to city confines
where I swim easily shore to shore,
not beguiling like an English Channel or a Lake Ontario.
I’ve swam it, -have I told you this?- several times before.
I dip toe in water and start
without crossing myself, a superstition
drowning in possibilities always dwells
near the surface, drives the survival
through my rippling arms and legs,
and the avuncular breathing?
Muscular anxiety propels through me
and forward, and,… Relax, everything will be ok
one voice, I think my mother’s, tells me.
But I’m adult now, I can measure risk
Never leave the boat,
your uncle, he was their best swimmer
panicked, drowned, I think father’s,
bubbles up from the viscous depths
childhood’s pool of repressed lakes,
tangled in weeds near the shore.
The crossing is successful.
I emerge from the water,
stretch on the table rock
and let the granite sheet’s
villainous fingers massage
tetanic muscle, fraying nerve,
but I, for attention, compete against
you, the Lake, centre of twisting gravity.
I return later in the season,
end of a balmy Indian summer.
Water still warm, tempting me
Come in, but no one is around
last chance to swim this season,
should I still swim?
No one is around, Come in!
I’m an adult now, I can measure risk.
I start, reach the middle.
How many feet is deep?
You’re a good swimmer, but I’m not relaxing,
the avuncular breathing
pressing hard for advantage
on its trail of ridden return,
under my chest wall’s gallop
And then I stop kicking.
Your successive warm amnion
waves, rock and soothe me
like inside, fruitful womb, expectant mother.
Momentarily I catch a glimpse, the allantois
the fluidity of the other side, the changing absolute.
I resurface to turn and go back.
In the distance the clasping limbs
of your shore trees, beach boulders
and tangle weeds round the sound,
all proclaim in a soft parade
Until the next crossing, our next visit.
Flying and Failing by Jack Gilbert
By Jack Gilbert
Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.
It's the same when love comes to an end,
or the marriage fails and people say
they knew it was a mistake, that everybody
said it would never work. That she was
old enough to know better. But anything
worth doing is worth doing badly.
Like being there by that summer ocean
on the other side of the island while
love was fading out of her, the stars
burning so extravagantly those nights that
anyone could tell you they would never last.
Every morning she was asleep in my bed
like a visitation, the gentleness in her
like antelope standing in the dawn mist.
Each afternoon I watched her coming back
through the hot stony field after swimming,
the sea light behind her and the huge sky
on the other side of that. Listened to her
while we ate lunch. How can they say
the marriage failed? Like the people who
came back from Provence (when it was Provence)
and said it was pretty but the food was greasy.
I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell,
but just coming to the end of his triumph.