Poem Analysis: Paul Zimmer's "Upon Entering the Storm, Unable to Swim, Zimmer, Rollo, and Cecil Are Saved"

 This poem appeared in The Republic of Many Voices and the University of Georgia Press edition of Paul Zimmer's Crossing to Sunlight: Selected Poems. You can read it on Google Books here. You can hear the poet read the poem here (you'll have to forward to the proper poem).

The poem opens "A storm mixed and fell upon the lake." We have three figures, presumably all men are stuck during a storm while having a boating mishap. The first two seven-line stanzas describe this outcome.
The volta comes at the beginning of the third and final stanza: "Then a great voice said, 'Rub-a-dub-dub!' "

The trick of this multiple it's a shift in tone--referencing a nursery rhyme where three men are out to sea. One version calls the men "fools": They are, after all, not sailors but men of other professions trying to sail in a tub.

The final line claims: "And we sailed off believing, believing." There are a number of ways to read this transformation:

1. Straight. Three men are inexperienced sailors who fear drowning until they encounter a "great voice" [God or something like a god]. This reading fails to take into account the tone shift with "Rub-a-dub-dub!" however. Perhaps God is amused at their ineptitude. Their belief is real. Perhaps God sees them as absurd and foolish.
2. Imaginative. Three young boys imagine themselves out in lake, shower head raining down on them and their imagination leads them to despair until a parent reminds them of who and where they are. The main tone, though, undermines this reading unless the boys are imaginative. Their belief is both absurd and real. Parents provide illusory protection.
3. Both interpretations simultaneously. These men are boys, fools, but God makes them feel secure as if parent talking to them. Their belief is both absurd and real. But should they be believing? Or was it just their imagination? Maybe their fear was absurd. They are, after all, on a lake, albeit in a leaky boat.

What makes this one fun are the multiple possibilities in delineating what's happening too much. Some details make it seem real, others do not. The possibilities make it a tantalizing joy to read.

Paul Zimmer calls the poem "kind of irreverent," which perhaps shuts down reading #1, but maybe not since God is unlikely to quote from a nursery rhyme. He does, however, mention that it's original inspiration is based on an event that occurred in reality, which bolsters reading #1 or #3.