I salute at the threshold of the North Sea of my mind And I nod to the boredom that drove me here to face the tide And I swim, I swim, oh swim Dip a toe in the ocean, oh how it hardens and it numbs The rest of me is a version of man built to collapse in crumbs And if I hadn’t come now to the coast to disappear I may have died in a landslide of rocks and hopes and fears So I 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? Are you a bag of sand?

Up to my knees now, do I wade, 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 a drowning of the past She is there on the shoreline throwing stones at my back So I 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? Are you a bag of sand?

And the water is taller than me And the land is a marker line All I have is a body adrift in water, salt and sky