Making decisions throughout life is inevitable. It is unavoidable and inescapable. But being humans with flaws, we can make wrong decisions, which can lead to not being able to make decisions at all, also known as death. Margaret Avison's poem, "The Swimmer's Moment" explains that when you are put into a hard place in your life and you believe you have nothing to live for, you can make a decision of either refusing to give in and be saved or be sucked into the whirlpool of death. Water in this poem is obviously highly symbolic. Water symbolizes state of mind. When the water is in the form of a "whirlpool" or "deadly rapid" these things depict a hard time in one's life.
             Every human will one time in their life feel as if they could not go on in life. Avison's poem is a poem about struggle in life until a point where life is no longer bearable. The people in Avison's poem find an answer in suicide. When they have finally reached death in the "ominous center", they are finally free from the suffering which gives them an "eternal boon of privacy".
             "So that we can turn away from their defeat
             With a despair, not for their deaths, but for
             Ourselves, who cannot penetrate their secret"
             This passage speaks of the people who are affected by the deaths. They are left in despair and bewilderedness wondering why. Wonder why did they die? What caused them to take their own life? Why didn't I help? They cannot understand and will probably never understand. The death has given the victim "eternal boon of privacy". Peace.
             The poem ends, " Where one or two have won:/The silver reaches the estuary". The one or two that have one refers to the people who have survived their suicide attempts. Silver, being a symbol of second (eg. Olympic medals) is like a second chance. The last line depicts a river ch
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