Blue, Green, Red and Purple: Aquatic Debacle
Betty Collins’s sensuous poem tells of a day when a cruel notice ruined what had started out to be a time of physical delight.
Softly he’d said (or words to this effect) - let’s go
to the Aquatic Centre; let’s go there, and within
the steamy, fetid, chlorine-stinking dome,
noisy with echoing voices, splashing water, kids screaming,
let’s swim a bit, wallow a bit; let’s soak and titillate
our senses in the spa, dry off in the sauna. Let us
pretend that we are in a tropical paradise,
that we are not surrounded by other peoples’ damp clothing,
grubby towels, hot chips, and temporarily abandoned runners
and socks. Let us shower well, and wash our hair in perfumed lotions;
and after all that, let us drive back slowly in our air-conditioned limousine,
windows steaming up from the heat of our bodies, our breath;
we will drive down O’Connell Street, admire the light spilling from
buzzy restaurant windows, glimpse the laughing groups and couples
consuming hot food, robust, ruddy, and glowing with winter health;
Let’s not stop on the way, but go back quickly to our insulated nest,
and make love. Perhaps we’ll sit awhile before the gas fire,
sipping warm mulled wine, in satin nightie (me) and warm pyjamas
(him); and then clean, clean, ever so well soaked clean,
begin to touch, and nibble, and so, by degrees, snuggle ourselves
to an active bed.
So he had said (more or less) -
but when we got to the Aquatic Centre.
it was all in darkness:
and a cruel notice said that it was closed
for renovations,
and would reopen in (only) three weeks.
