Labor Day, 1961, Last Poolside Event

John Tabb DuVal

for Frank DuVal, 1945 – 2021

Five old men
stand with five long fishing rods behind
five boys, each harnessed to the old men’s lines,
at the hundred-meter pool’s shallow-water end.

The boys crouch forward. Before we can hear the shot,
they shoot straight to the water surface: ten,
thirty meters, unstoppable! The men
wind their reels, feeding the hooked lines out,

two of them smoking. They don’t stand a chance,
we think. But four of the boys slow down, stall,
and four men reel them in. One boy advances
a little more slowly, maybe. Now he’s in
the deep water. You’ll make it, Frank! we call,
we call. He doesn’t. The swimmers never win.