It Works Just as Well – Another Mildly Creative Poem

At first you stick your toe in
and it’s wet and it’s cold.
A shiver runs up your leg
and works its way throughout your torso.

How deep? How deep?
You’re really not sure
but you slide your foot forward,
allowing your ankle to dip beneath the surface.

Forward, forward, slowly, slowly
inching your way, you give yourself
to the swell and the current
and all that’s flowing through you.

Soon, you realize, you’ll be in it
and up to your neck,
so you loosen your arms
and feel them lifting, drifting, rising.

Then you pause and catch your breath
before you drop your head
and place your face in the water
to let it sense ansd see you.

You lift your foot, the left one,
then the right one, then the left one again.
Then you push and you lunge and you kick
and you thrust with your arms.

You’re swimming now.
You’re splashing now.
You’re tumbling and turning
and you’re whole body’s churning.

You could have dove in.
There is, after all, a high cliff nearby,
but you waded in instead
and it’s then that you realize
that it works just as well.

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Tagged as: Poems from a Spiral Bound Life