Swimming, When No One Taught You How
(Non-Elegiac Version)Most of us aren’t saints — we’re swimmers.
Cursing the current, watching the tide turn yellow,
Some of our fellow paddlers cause it to flow,
With grins too wide and hands too dirty.
We dodge brown bits of memory,
Resurfaced truths, stories best left half-told.
The water’s warm, but not welcoming.
It carries echoes, sobs, declarations made under too much gin.
We paddle past last chances, lost bets,
Good intentions bloated and floating.
Some dive deep for reckoning,
Others skim the surface, slick with avoidance.
I swim steady, head high,
Because below me rests the past—
And I’ve already drowned there once.
Copyright 2025 M. W. Van Dyke
All Rights Reserved
Swimming, When No One Taught You How
(Elegiac Version)
Most of us aren’t saints—just swimmers,
caught in the same slow current,
treading water where regrets ripple faintly
and silence carries the weight of choices
too heavy to name aloud.
The yellowed tide isn’t all rot—
it’s memory, tinged with the off-color truth
that some of the spill came from us.
And the brown flecks—well,
they drift from yesterday’s claims and
the mouths that swore they’d changed.
Some dive for clarity,
others drift, letting time disguise intention.
Me, I paddle quietly,
between the ache and the echo,
between what was done
and what was almost brave.
I keep my head above the past,
not out of pride,
but because I know its undertow—
the ghosts it hides,
the way it teaches drowning
before it ever teaches how to swim.
Copyright 2025 M. W. Van Dyke
All Rights Reserved
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