Swimming like falling
backwards
with arms thrown
into plush cushions
over and over.
Floating
through an asteroid belt
of bubbles twinkling among blossom
in the crisp-packet static
fizz & slow velcro
unsticking of the rain –
each white needle turns once
and throws up a plume.
And the green river
between the green banks
flecked with a foam of hogweed
holds me against the sky
slides over my throat like silk
and bears me as if unconscious
into shaded pools
under trees full of birds.
Ross Styants is a programmer and a poet living by the river in Bristol, UK. He has lived all over the world. For work he crafts alternative realities in VR and AR. It’s the wildernesses of our shared physical reality he’s most fond of though and he has always sought out these places for inspiration and repose; perhaps his favourite being the dunes between the forest and the sea on the Gower. He can also often be found at Conham river park in Bristol where the raw material for this poem was mined. He has always liked to write down his thoughts but only recently began gathering some of them into poems. He also enjoys painting, surfing, fatherhood and long baths.