You Never Swim in the Same Poem Twice

Heraclitus

You open the anthology at this,
Your favourite place, delightful in its clear
And known familiarity. It tempts you in.
You hardly need to swim, but simply glide
Through words you know so well, until
Your attention snags, awkwardly, oddly,
On something, something slightly jarring, unforeseen;
You’re livened, puzzled, thinking: Was that there
Before? You swim with concentration now,
Through patches clear and patches murkier;
A chilly current braces you; you thrill
To undercurrents swirling, maybe dangerous,
And colder hints of depths; the hint of something
Unknown, deep-hidden, unexplored far down
Beneath  the surface that you thought you knew
Excites your mind; now all your heart and soul
Is in the enterprise; you’ve quite forgot
That you’ve been here before; each detail seems
New now, a revelation; you’ve progressed
Far far beyond the tourist’s fallacy -
That assumption that a thing or place is made
For your convenience and pleasure - where you’ve come
Is foreign, strange, and that is why you care.
Exhilarated now, you swim and swim.
Maybe, hubristic, you will think for a second
Of other readers, out of their depth perhaps,
Gasping for air; that puts you off your stroke
And you must fight to get it back again,
Strike out again, find what you came here for;
And when you’re done you’ll have a glowing sense
Of why the thing matters, why it’s an old friend.

George Simmers

If you have any thoughts about this poem,  George Simmers would be pleased to hear them