on Christmas Eve 2020 we left Dublin for the west

Connemara –

pearly and luminescent in winter, but the wind blows hard

(*I can’t find the name of this beach

how can a beach like that have no name?)

Anchor Beach was just up the road, the anchor starting to reveal itself as the tide went out

I wanted to see it in all the tides

the stranded anchor gives the beach a bleak magnetism

(its ship, the Verity, sailed all the way from Quebec but sank here in January 1880)

it needed to be saluted with a cold swim on Christmas morning:

it was freezing and inexplicably enjoyable

the wind started to whip up though

ruffling the sea

after that there was no more swimming with the anchor & we went back to the city, to be locked down

*the nameless beach might be Emlagh beach