I mainly write songs based around the history, legends and events from the East Riding of Yorkshire, but this is one that I wrote shortly after the death of my old friend, Roger Deakin. Roger was a great environmentalist who loved the British countryside (he was one of the founders of ommon Ground) and the author of Waterlog, an account of 'wild swimming' around the British Isles, so the song is called, appropriately, The Swimmer. The problem is, I can't sing it without crying:

The Swimmer

It was one of those moments when you feel the earth turning.
A three-quarter moon in a clear autumn sky
Brought into my heart a curious yearning
For things that have passed and have yet to pass by;
For friends who have gone and those still remaining;
While the river of life still winds through the land,
Whose secrets, revealed by the long years' waning,
Can slip through your fingers or be grasped in your hand.

There's a feeling that time is not of the essence;
Not a fear of the future or delight in the past,
Just the space that is filled by a friend when his presence,
Is replaced by the pleasure of what he has left.
Now the spirits of the earth rise to embrace the giver
Like the low-lying mist of a soft autumn dawn
And the swimmer goes down once again to the river,
Where, as sun glints on water, the dream is reborn.