Jane Zwart

Lower Falls, Enfield Glen

for Sarah

When I tell the lifeguard—his roost
is right next to the diving board—
I’m feeling a little nervous, he says,

Okay…, already erasing the hook
over the first period in the ellipsis
he drags behind the word.

Okay… in the voice young men reserve
for the weird and querulous, lest
a question mark connect us;

if it’s level enough to absolve boys
of their mothers, it’ll do for the strangeness
of any woman their senior in decades

and affect, hilarity, worry. Not that I wish
this young man ill; if I wish him anything,
it’s a long life. If I wish him anything,

I wish him the day he can no longer
afford boredom and will thrill, instead,
at what seems ordinary now.

I wish him this: that he’ll steel himself
to walk a plank and plunge in the sudden cold.
I wish him the surprise that will take half

his breath. And this: someone young to guard
his life as he too surfaces, cussing
and laughing and louder than the waterfall.

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Jane Zwart teaches at Calvin University and co-edits book reviews for Plume. Her poems have appeared in Poetry, The Southern Review, Threepenny Review, HAD, and Ploughshares, and her debut book is coming out in February 2026.