Late Autumnal Swimming

Poem by C.T. Hilton

In two weeks the winter will be on us -

The orange leaves in those tall trees

Will pirouette towards the earth

To be trampled hard upon the ground

Where they’ll lie brown and dead.

The open air pool at London Fields Lido

Could draw us out to one another

And we’ll make neat lines back and forth, back and forth,

In the slow lane with the grannies and the children

Heads craning above the cobalt surface of the water

Swimming side by side, as the winter edges closer.

And steam will cloud up around us 

As the showers hiss upon the tiled floor 

Of changing rooms that have no roof at all,

The rain will fall around us too,

As we shiver in the pinprick streams of water, 

With purple lips and fingers turned to clay.

We’ll look forward to our brief reprieve

When we’re wrapped in jackets, hats and scarves

Black coffee clutched in itchy chilblained hands,

The chlorine lingering in our eyes, our noses and our hair

As we walk through Haggerston Park and talk

About the places that we’ve been and if we’ll go again.

But in the end, it will all come back to nothing

As we walk along the towpath 

By the canal at Broadway Market

The black and heavy water oozing by

Carrying the dead leaves as it goes,

And you’ll kiss me on the cheek to say goodbye.

C.T. Hilton is a queer poet based in Edinburgh, having lived in Samos, London and Paris over the last four years. He started writing poetry as a way to process trauma, creating externalised spaces where he could work through difficult emotions. His work now focuses on relationships, sensuality, and nature.