The Fateful Swim
The Fairy Pools, Glenbrittle, Isle of Skye, Scotland.
William Butler Yeats’s “The Stolen Child” inspired “The Fateful Swim,” as it reminded me of the opportunity I had to hike, with a group of fellow tour bus travelers, to the Fairy Pools in Glen Brittle on the Isle of Skye, in March 2014.
Poem revised from previous publication in Realms Young Adult Fantasy Literary Magazine (see CV).
It seemed an innocent thing
to go swimming in this spring
when the high sun
baked away the fun
of biking and hiking
It seemed an innocent thing
to go swimming in this spring
when the mountain fog
shimmered into humidity
and the purple-tinted bog
belched unapologetically
a sulfurous stench
making even sheep wretch
It seemed an innocent thing
to go swimming in this spring
where the water, deep and truly blue,
ran sweet, swift, and cool
where the rain-cut rocks
thickened in shadowed outcrops
and the water tumbled and fell
and took me straight to Hell
I disappeared on a summer day
and left friends looking every way
We wrote notes to family
so as not to cause calamity
and with a packed picnic lunch
followed the river through the sponge
of sodden shrubs and stubby grasses
to a place of secret morasses
glamour’d by the ethereal temptation
of the Fairy Pools—in celebration
of a refreshing retreat
from the oppressive heat
I disappeared on a summer day
and left friends looking every way
for when we slid into these waters
we did not think of the plotters
who beneath these surfaces hid
waiting to steal an unsuspecting kid
we thought only of splashing,
kicking, and laughing,
of treading beneath these boulders
so cool water cascaded onto our shoulders
of wicked tricksters we forgot
and wondered if there were fish to be caught
I disappeared on a summer day
and left friends looking every way
up, down, in between,
but never for things unseen
and now I swim here perpetually
knowing another will join us eventually
looking out into a world lost
and knowing we are the Fey’s star-crossed