Creative Traditional:

[JolieH]

The quickest way is to jump.
Some of them do it first.
I prefer the gradual
slipping slowly from the edge.

The chill of water rising up
my sides. Then letting go,
until my entire body’s
completely submerged.

catching up with the rest later
breathing on the return,
building strength to take myself
around and around again.

[Kit Carson]

Very nice! You are learning how to add great depth to a simple poem, sometimes those pack a powerful wallop. Was reading Frost and Giovanni back to back last night...felt like a rock'em, sock'em robot, lol.

[JolieH]

Thanks Mike,
lol sounds like an entertaining evening. I had a lot of response / critique on this poem at PSU writing list. Some of those guys are pretty smart. They seem to like this one and gave some interesting comments. A few mentioned they enter the water the same way. Some picked out redundancy in S2, and a couple wanted me to change the second line in S1, and a couple were confused with line 1 S3, then a few other random suggestions. The meaning some recognized as fall others recovery, but it was all positive – except one that said it was just about swimming around the pool and not very interesting. I didn’t try to force any meaning – not really. It was about swim class in college. I liked the idea of using an instance of startle to the system, kind of experimenting to see what I get.