The Italian and the Red-Hooded Debbie Take a Swim on a Cold Winter Morning in Scotland

On New Year's Day a friend and I began the newly made year with a Scottish tradition on the cold shores of a bay into the North Sea. Joining a cavalcade of both locals and foreigners, we marched through a small antiquated town to the frigid waters along the shoreline, where then, like fools, like newborn babes, we proceeded to cast ourselves into those waves. Purification. Early stages of hypothermia. Wonderful bliss. Long live the new year!

Six Poncho Villas in sombreros and fiber black moustaches,
Shaking maracas and shaking skin,
Shivering on the cobble stone lane,
Dating or dancing,
We can’t tell,
Straight to the sea,

Recent snow peppered with the dirt of days past,
A Celtic crew on the bandstand,
Oiling the sunbathers in their hardly modest swimsuits
     with bagpipe tunes and fogged breath,
Crowded bodies basking in a sunless winter haze,
Gooseflesh and nipples stiff,
Opalescent fingers and colorless lips,
Straight to the sea,

We march along a one-lane ice cube cobble stone street,
A couple of deadwoods and a malt liquor quickly evaporating
     in the confines of our depleting inner core,
Bikinis and frog suits and cross-dressers rub shoulders,
Edging each other onward,
Varied accents intertwined in the vapors of our breath overhead,
Until the old town steps that lead down to the shore,
And the rocks that would hurt were pain left to feel,
And only shallow hungry waves beyond,
Straight to the sea,

Cast not the tender child of your loins into those dark waters,
Cast not your feeble elders with dark veins and loose skin,
Cast not armless veterans just home from distant dying,
Cast not the lifeless goddess whose only power comes from
     her adoration of the sun’s warm rays,

Instead, send he whose sins are filth upon his skin,
Whose feet bear the burden of stones edged in blood,
To bury himself below that glacial thirst in baptism’s holy passion,
To rise in madness and take hold of heaven,
His upturned voice spilling from his lungs the sacrament of vile sanctification,
Washed in the waves where snow crabs dance and tankers plunder ever on,
Pale pagans shuttering in the New Year’s mythos,
The Italian wearing the stripes of L.A.’s latest fashion requirements,
And the Debbie in red wool who rode upon his back,
Hot tea and a future of bun-less hamburgers,
But for now -
Straight to the sea.

1.2011