Waterfalls

Susie Wright

At Wallbach lido, Lenk

in an empty underground changing room

I hear no chatter…..

just a background chug,

like being down in the bowels of a ship.

This is the sound of machinery that heats and circulates water,

where bubbles rise

to a generous open-air Jacuzzi whose meniscus hazes

a mighty vista.

Up by the pool

a tall metal shiny

wide mouthed geezer presides over 50 metres,

where an inflatable plastic steeple chase,

over blown in yellow and green

floats across three full lanes.

Sinking into a chilled 21 degrees of the drinkable brink,

ducking under a glassy surface of calm

where the only thing to be seen,

is light on the equally pocked pristine aluminium floor.

This water

has been thrown in massive volume

from a great height.

It has been propelled through small crevasses,

hussled, battered and forced into cascades across the mountainside.

Its frothy volume has sprung up to cool hikers passing by and

created microclimates with its permanent drizzle on the rocks.

Piped and pumped, it has come to its dead end in a

lined aluminiferous basin,

its momentum halted to a simple play

of refracting prisms.

Still and cool, rippled only by the waft of a hand.

I take in a few lengths and at eye level

watch a wren catch a worm.

Otter-like, I move in and it scarpers.

At the end of my swim, energised, I stop to gaze back  

at a perfectly mirrored scene.

Black sedimentary crusts and white glacial peaks

tower high above the valley head.

The mountains weep in waterfalls, everywhere,

drenching the faces of the rock.

How will we weep, when these tears have dried ?