Carolyn Oulton

Silver

My mother exercises
with the candlesticks.
Biscuit-coloured arms
threaded with silver.
Up and down.

I’m wearing the sea,
its hand up my back.
A woman stops swimming
to ask me
if I’ve seen her dog.

My mother’s body
is slowly falling off.
I watch my arms in the water,
moving through silver
up and down.

Carolyn Oulton is Professor of Victorian Literature and Director of the International Centre for Victorian Women Writers at Canterbury Christ Church University, UK. She teaches on the Creative and Professional Writing BA and is Project Co-Lead for https://kent-maps.online/ in collaboration with JSTOR Labs. Her most recent poetry collection is Accidental Fruit (Worple). ‪@kentmapsonline.bsky.social carolyn.oulton@canterbury.ac.uk

Carolyn said this about her poem:

My mother really does do armchair exercises with her candlesticks. There is a lot that is deliberately not being said in this poem. But I was thinking about physical and mental health and how we are connected in ambivalent ways across generations. Cold water swimming offers an immense sense of freedom, which isn’t available to my mother. The image of her body ‘slowly falling off’ is based on observation. I knew it could also be read as ‘I’m swimming to outwit genetic inheritance’ and it seemed fair enough to leave it open to interpretation.