Into the Blue

Down by the Martello Tower,
I dived in,
A rump, rising in the raw water,
So icy it was,
With the gradh swirling up and around.

Old man fingers grasping,
Seaweed hat,
And a tiny shell for a nose.
I surfaced.
Winter aconite-skin,
I am white, invisible,
I whispered into the waves.

Dipping and up onto rocks,
Slippery and stone-salt crunch of sand.

I saw blue-underwater,
Lips of bladderwrack,
Racing black slate-faces.

I was so cold, so cold,
The tower just a chalky, Dalkey boot-fact above me,
My red lips like the seeds you spat into my grin.

Those days, you lifted me out of water,
Onto cool sand drifts,
And aloft the white promontory.