The waves climb high,
then collapse into the blue below.
They mix among the already,
and the forever there.
swim little girl, swim
I look out into the endless blue,
you're six years old again.
Splashing. Swimming.
Calling for my name to help,
but you can do it, I know it.
Swim little girl, swim.
That was many years ago,
and how the world has change.
Others have left your life,
others have joined it.
You were always strong, always.
Swim little girl, swim
The waves are like glass.
They scar your body leaving
the waves crimson and tainted.
But you stay strong.
Your voice screams louder.
You need my help,
you need me to stay,
but I couldn't hold on any more.
Swim little girl, swim
My race was over.
I sat and I waited til you came.
I watched the waves climb and fall.
But you're nearly here now.
You're nearly home.
Swim little girl, swim.
The sea's have now ran red.
The waves fall on you,
knocking you under.
I scream after you,
you scream back with stained
water in your mouth.
Swim little girl, swim.
I run into the shallow
and hold out my hand.
You approach the shore,
but you're no longer the six
year old girl I remember.
You're and old woman,
like your mother.
You made it little girl.
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140,811 Literary Works • 673,693 Reviews
This is a great poem with better ideas. Your spelling is good and your grammar is great. An overall great poem, I really liked it. Keep up the good work.
Tyler.
Seph already pointed out most of the spelling and grammar issues, so I won't touch it except to say that there are more. And they kept throwing me out of the poem.
As for punctuation, it struck me as very inconsistent throughout. It was almost as if you felt compelled to have a piece of punctuation at the end of every single line. And often that piece of punctuation was unnecessary and/or incorrect.
Punctuation, in addition to the placement of line breaks, has a huge impact upon your poetry as it is such an integral part of the poem's structure. And so I suggest that you play with the punctuation a bit more. Experiment. A good place to start is to write your poem out properly punctuated, like prose, and see if a lack or excess of punctuation works better than what you have now. This technique is also useful for figuring out where to place line breaks.
As far as the content of the poem goes, you did a pretty good job setting up the twist at the end; it wasn't expected, but it wasn't entirely unexpected either. I think you could have perhaps incorporated a bit more creative imagery, maybe made stronger allusions to the effects of the water and swimming on the girl, but it's pretty solid, misspellings and grammar aside. Though considering how obvious such errors are in poetry, that's not saying much as what solidity you had was overshadowed by the wrong tenses and misspellings, in addition to the odd punctuation.
So, overall, I suggest you go through this and fix the errors. Also, don't be afraid to play around with the punctuation; every line does not have to end in a piece of it.
This was not what I expected. The ending came as kind of a shock to me, because the tone was so different from the rest of the piece. I can't quite decide how I feel about it, but I think I like it. So nice job.
Personally, I think that you could create a stronger image for the beginning, just to grab the reader. Set a tone for the poem: if it's going to be a story about submission, have the waves "collapse". If it's one of violence, have them "crash into the cliffs as if in the midst of a furious war". That type of thing. Only not so Coral-addicted-to-imagery-afied.
The first line is awkwardly worded-- I don't think that "mix" is a strong enough word, and that you could phrase some other way than "the already".
You've already used the phrase "blue" to mean ocean/sea in the last stanza. You could change up your word choice in order to keep from sounding too repetitive.
For the beginning of this part, I don't think you need to separate them into sentences-- it makes the flow a bit awkward. Instead, you could say "old again, splashing, swimming, calling" and it would sound much smother. Also, if you were to word the next line like "calling my name for help" it would run smoother. It gave me a double-take as is.
And I feel like this stanza could be stronger. You did a nice job coming back from the time lapse with your first two lines, but the others felt a little too iffy to me.
Excellent work on this one, though the last line feels a bit weird to me-- describe what you were holding on to, why when you let go it's so disastrous, if you weren't helping her anyways.
You mention a "race" but it seems really disconnected. if you want that phrase, you should probably elaborate on what you're talking about beforehand. Also, how do you know that she's almost home? If you can see her, you could describe her approach back to shore, maybe the struggle or her going under a couple of times, when you thought she was almost gone.
Remember that apostrophes are only used for possessions or contractions. For plurals, you don't use them.
This part kind of describes her struggle, which I think could be put under that line from the last stanza. The reference to "stained water" was a great reminder and powerful image, so great job on that. However, I do think that you could use a different word than "scream" when she responds. Maybe even just "called back" or even just "responds".
I think that you could say "to the shallows", and maybe something a little stronger than "run". You could play with your language in the first two lines altogether I think, to really make that a powerful moment when she returns. Also, the break at "six year-old" felt really weird to me.
Again, I think you could use some more description when you're describing her as an old woman. Describe her arms, pruny from the waters and wrinkled like dates. Are her eyes tired from straining at the sun? I think that you could associate a lot of age-driven maladies with swimming for too long, and it would really bring this piece all together very nicely. Also, the last line is almost anti-climactic. It's not what I was expecting, but it's stated almost too simply, where I almost overlooked it, and when I did read it, I kind of went, "Oh". I feel like you could use some more build-up to it right before that. Summarize her struggle or something.
Just some thoughts. Feel free to completely disregard them.
Nice job, overall. Really like the italicized parts, though I'd add a comma after the first "Swim".
Great piece!
-Coral-