PROMPT: Physical Activities or Exercises

Daily writing prompt
What are your favorite physical activities or exercises?

I never met a one I didn’t like.

PROMPT: Physical Exercise

What is your favorite form of physical exercise?

I’m a big fan of them all. I like to move it, move it.

Each in its time.

Though the less special equipment I need access to, the better. I’m a firm believer that one needs only the body and mind to keep a fit body. It’s all a matter of how, how often, how intensely, and how safely one moves one’s body. Gadgety fitness can become too fetishist, and not build integration of the body as much as is ideal.

PROMPT: Hobby or pastime

What is your favorite hobby or pastime?

Swimming, at the moment.

Night Swimming [Free Verse]

Trudging into lapping waves
On a dim and dusky eve.

Chest deep
One pops up, pressing one's chest
Onto the water,
And swims toward a distant
Silhouetted rock outcrop.

But it doesn't stay silhouetted.

Soon, one is heading into
A grand, black abyss,
There is no shape in this world,
Only the feel of limbs -- pulling & kicking.

Sounds grow ever more feeble --
And ever more rare --
Until the smell of seawater becomes
A bright and vivid sensory experience --
Layered & textured.

Rolling onto one's back, one can see
Patches of sparkling stars
In the cloud gaps.

One lays upon the waves --
Feeling as though one conforms to them
As one floats like a piece of driftwood --
And sees the twinkle of distant stars,
In a world too vast to understand.

BOOKS: “Swimming” by Roger Deakin

Swimming: Vintage MinisSwimming: Vintage Minis by Roger Deakin
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Publisher Site – Vintage Minis

This book contains a collection of excerpts from the book Waterlog by Roger Deakin. It’s one volume from a series of short books that contain essays, stories, poems, or book excerpts that is put out by Penguin under the imprint “Vintage Minis.” The book describes the author’s experiences of wild swimming throughout Britain. The description of nature and of the exhilarating experience of wild swimming are beautifully composed, and it’s an all-around pleasant read.

If you’re interested in wild swimming, I’d recommend this book.

View all my reviews

Mutual Drift [Free Verse]

Lying back on the water,
Peering into a cloud,

I shift like driftwood --
rocking and rising,
rolling and dipping.

As I stare at the cloud,
It seems to stare back.

It drifts - suspiciously -
Or maybe I'm drifting
And it is still --

In truth, we're both drifting,
And neither of us has
The mental energy to be
Suspicious.