Dream Poem 55: Keep Paddling


Teaching paddling, I’m teaching a small new group
We are in America
we drop the car in a car park and get an inflatable dinghy at the dock.
I’m in charge.
I paddle it to an historic part of town,
we go look round an old house museum and there are actors
dressed up in Victorian costume, we can ask them questions about living in the house.
There is a Dad in black and a top hat,
some children they sit on a stool and we can question them.

There is a protected bay near the shops.
We are in the dinghy again, I point out to sea,
it is really choppy.
Paddling around the bay we come out of the protected area
into what is now quite a wild wild sea.
I tell everyone to hold on.

It is very rough water and difficult paddling
but we manage to get through.
Then the sky goes suddenly dark
yet we haven’t arrived back at to the car park and our car,
I don’t know where I am going,
it seems to be taking longer to get back than I realize.

Floating are wrecked dinghies, old lockers and debris swept off the shore line
from the town we have just been to,
broken things float in the water
and I keep paddling thinking,
we are in the Atlantic now and very deep water and probably sharks and big fish under the boat.

but I keep paddling,
I’m in charge and I’m scared
it is fully dark
and I have to navigate all this floating furniture
in the dark,
I’m so distraught and anxious
about getting back to the car, I think to myself,

Just keep paddling.

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