Swim Until You Can't See Land - Benjamin Francis Leftwich

We salute at the threshold of the North Sea in my mind

And a nod to the boredom that drove me here to face the tide and swim.

I swim.

Oh, swim.

Dip the toe in the ocean.

Oh how it hardens and it numbs.

The rest of me is a version of man, built to collapse into crumbs.

And if I hadn’t come down to the coast to disappear

I may have died in a land-slide of the rocks, the hopes and fears.

So swim until you can’t see land.

Swim until you can’t see land.

Swim until you can’t see land

Are you a man or are you a bag of sand?

Swim until you can’t see land.

Swim until you can’t see land.

Swim until you can’t see land

Are you a man or are you a bag of sand?

Up to my knees now, do I wait?

Do I dive?

The sea has seen my like before though it’s my first and perhaps last time.

Let’s call me a baptist, call this the drowning of the past.

She’s there on the shoreline throwing stones at my back.

So swim until you can’t see land.

Swim until you can’t see land.

Swim until you can’t see land

Are you a man or are you a bag of sand?

Swim until you can’t see land.

Swim until you can’t see land.

Swim until you can’t see land

Are you a man or are you a bag of sand?

Now the water’s taller than me and the land is a marker line

All I am is a body adrift in water, salt and sky.

So swim until you can’t see land.

Swim until you can’t see land.

Swim until you can’t see land

Are you a man or are you a bag of sand?

Swim until you can’t see land.

Swim until you can’t see land.

Swim until you can’t see land

Are you a man or are you a bag of sand?