Swimming In The Red Sea Before A Sandstorm Poem by James Sutherland-Smith

Surfacing I see the great sun sink
Behind a pier which takes
The oil pipeline to deep water.
A fisherman spreads his mat
On a dune for evening prayer
While a pack of dogs sit
In shallows to cool themselves
And three women walk on the shore
Shielded by their husbands
From the naked white man in the sea.
A breeze lifts their veils to show skirts
Red, blue and green slashed with orange.

I dive and my shadow wavers
Across the fluted sand
To where devil fish quiver
And change colour when my darkness
Touches them. No mind was ever
Clear as this transparency
Over green pods of the sea grape
And slate blue of the digging crab.

Surfacing I see the sun lose shape
Foundering upon the horizon
As light burnishes the struts
And silvery petrol holders.
The dogs whine uneasily
And trot towards the shelter
Of a rock while the fisherman
Is crouched in hazy supplication.
The wind increases tugging
A multi-coloured umbrella
Which the husbands have put up
A hundred yards away.

I dive as if into a mind
Which does not know itself,
The sea coloured with a little sand.
I cannot use my eyes
But feel the water on my skin
As I swim down from the bath warmth
At the top to colder levels
Sensing icier undertows.

Surfacing I can't see the pier,
Barely the fisherman
Who stubbornly continues
His blurred devotion while the dogs
And couples huddle,
All beastwise, against the rock
As the sandstorm streams above them.
I swim out diving and diving
To avoid drowning in the air
And reach the yellow reef
To dive once again deeply
Into clearer, stranger waters.