What Doesn't Kill You - Sept 1 2026

 

What Doesn’t Kill You  . . . 

Sept 1 2026

The water’s cold.

A brisk breeze

cools the evening air.

Clouds pass over the sun

and the temperature drops abruptly. 

I steel myself to enter.

Make it quick

because slow immersion

is not only torture

but a good chance to bail.

I swim hard, then harder still.

Use the power of thought

to distance mind from body.

Feel my blood surge, and senses sharpen,

then reimagine cold

as energizing,

a restorative plunge

that both cleanses and heals. 

But also think of the plush towel

folded by the shore,

the hot shower

waiting to reward me.

Fall is coming,

winter

in 3 short months.

And the months do get shorter

the years faster

the older I get.

It’s nice, once you get used to it

we used to enthuse

splashing playfully,

but said less in earnest than to taunt. 

Still, it’s better than admonishing 

what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.

you can get used to anything.

But there is only me

to offer encouragement

as I steel myself to enter,

seeking strength of mind

and purification by cold.

Not to mention

to test my manliness,

resurrect

my younger self.

Or attempt to.

And I do get used to it

   . . . until far from shore

I don’t,

the chill seeping in

as my heart quickens

throat clutches

stroke slows.

The last of the sun

dips below the horizon

and the light abruptly dims.

I lift my head and glimpse;

the beach looks small, in the distance,

and the gap is hardly closing.

All true: stay young, be manly, feel that surge of blood.

The calendar changed, and the lake becomes less welcoming every day. 

Distance may be measurable and fixed, but in perception, all things are relative. So it’s true, when you’ve swum out until the cold can no longer be ignored:  a quick glimpse, and the shore seems further away than the last time you looked, while the gap is hardly closing.