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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

HOW TO SWIM by AMOS RUSSEL WELLS

First Line: TWAS MANY DAYS WITH SAM AND JIM
Last Line: I LEARN AT LAST THAT I CAN SWIM.
Subject(s): SWIMMING & SWIMMERS;
'Twas many days with Sam and Jim
Before they taught me how to swim.
A swimming collar, fat and wide,
Around my timid neck was tied;
I had a life-preserver on,
And buoyant boards to float upon,
And ventured out six feet or more
From safety and the beckoning shore.
I paddled in the shallows there
With quite a bold, determined air,
And got the motions to a T,
As Jim and Sam did both agree;
But, some way, spite of Sam and Jim,
I never managed -- quite -- to -- swim.

One day, worn out with these attempts,
Discarding my accoutrements,
I stood there, like the fool I am,
All goose flesh, watching Jim and Sam;
When, suddenly, they rushed ashore,
And, heeding not my panic roar,
They caught me up and carried me,
Indignant, fighting to get free,
Along a rustic bridge, to where
The deepest, deadliest waters were,
Then threw me in with warning grim:
"You booby! Now it's sink or swim!"

And it was swim. A splash! A scream!
A frantic struggle with the stream!
I waxed a demon in my wrath,
But floundered on my watery path,
And gasping, faint, too weak to stand,
And blubbering, I reached the land.
Thus -- tardy thanks to Sam and Jim,
I learned at last the way to swim.

And now, as I surrender me
To some ecstatic, leaping sea,
Or cleave the waters dark and cool
Of heron-haunted forest pool,
Or through the shining of some lake
My liquid flashing course I take,
I say, while wrapped in that delight,
"Well, Jim was right, and Sam was right."

And often, in these later days
Of hustling twentieth-century ways,
As from the shore I watch the tide
Of life and labor deep and wide,
Where fierce contentions clash and beat
Along the current of the street,
And in the ocean of the town
I see full many a wreck go down,
As, bound by timorous despair
I stand aloof and idle there,
The thought returns of Sam and Jim
And how they made a coward swim.
"Jump in!" I bid my shrinking soul,
"Nor heed the waves that angry roll,
Nor breakers, fierce howe'er they be;
A man is lighter than the sea.
Trust in your lungs and muscles stout
And in God's ocean. Out! Swim out!"

Then, as I venture to be brave
And hurl my body on the wave,
And pay no heed to my alarms,
But use my feet and use my arms,
I find my body instantly
In liquid oneness with that sea,
And -- thanks once more to Sam and Jim --
I learn at last that I can swim.



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