1 loop
lake nokomis open swim
85 degrees
water temp: 81 degrees*
*measured on 6 july, so probably warmer today, almost a week later
Today the goal was to take it easy on my shoulder. It had been feeling better by the end of this week, but I’m thinking about my bigger goal for the summer: swimming one day (24 collective hours) in august, so I didn’t want to overdo it. Just past the first orange buoy, my shoulder began to ache a little and then ached, dully, for the rest of the loop. I think I can still swim; I just need to do less as I rehab it — strengthening exercises + RICEing it — well, mostly IIcing it: icing and Ibuprofen. It’s a bummer that my shoulder still hurts, especially since I was looking forward to July being a big month of swimming, but I’m not too upset. It could be a chance to approach my open swims differently, maybe spend more time going slow or stopping in the middle of the lake!
When Scott and I arrived at the lake, I noticed all the glittering on the surface. My first thought: wow, that looks so cool. My second thought: all that glitter means the surface is not smooth and that means the water is choppy. And it was. Also, warm — so warm! I liked the choppiness. It wasn’t rough — no big waves were crashing into me. Instead it was constant — wave after wave after wave, making me rock from side to side.
It was fitting that there were waves, because I’m working on revising/condensing a poem about waves (literal waves at open swim and waves of grief after my mom died). Hopefully today’s swim can serve as inspiration.
10 Wave Things
- stirred-up water below the surface with lots of sediment floating in front of me, 1: difficult to see anything, like my hands or bubbles or fish
- stirred-up water below the surface with lots of sediment floating in front of me, 2: water color was a mix between pea soup green and lentil dahl yellow
- stirred-up water above the surface, making it difficult to see buoys
- the surface: all glittered up
- no white-caps, but lots of spray flying high in the air
- an increased amount of breaststroke by other swimmers
- more breathing on one side, 1: in the first half of the loop, I breathed mostly to my right
- more breathing on one side, 1: in the first half of the loop, I breathed mostly to my left
- the yellow safety buoy tethered to my torso was bobbing vigorously
- I did not feel like I was fighting the water, but that it was holding me and reminding me it was there
Do I remember the sound of waves? No, I don’t recall the sloshing sound of the water as it rushed over my ears. I bet it was loud.
Found this poem when I searched, “waves” on poets.org. It’s a golden shovel poem, where the last word in each line comes from a different poem. The original golden shovel was Terrence Hayes creating a poem that ended each line with words from Gwendolyn Brooks’ “We Real Cool.”
[Waves rolling up] ii. / Kimiko Hahn
After Tada Chimako
If I don’t taste the complicated waves—
if I only see the rolling,
only hear the roiling up
or smell those waves
—then I will tumble
head over
stance. Then I spring
up, drenched in partisan sand.
I’d like to try something like this with my waves poem to suggest another meaning. I could either use words from a poem about grief or moving water. For grief, maybe Emily Dickinson, for water, Niedecker or Oswald? Maybe one of my favorites?