The diver is like a poet

The diver scripts possibilities
from the movement of tides
identifies the moment
from the wiggle of a sea snail
freezes time as though
struck by ideas
and captures the watery scene
in one heartbeat
as all pasts and futures
dissolve and converge
into that instant of creation.

Keen to every flicker of light
and the shifting of shadows
probing into caves,
beneath overhanging rocks
for signs of life
accompanied by the intimate
sound of bubbles
gurgling from the regulator
deep in an embrace
finding none more complete
than the blue womb of the ocean.

Rewarded by the sight
of a white-tip shark
huddling with three babies in a cove
or a giant turtle swimming by,
indifferent as the surrounding void,
solitary as the diver
lost in a world of thoughts
thoughts entangled
at first, like seaweeds
later to be organized
into words and stanzas
movement and description
the way masses of shapes and colors
organize themselves
into a coral garden.

The diver coaxes lion fishes
from out of the crevices
clown fishes
from among the anemones
and verses
from the soul
struggling to be free
to shape stories, to make sense
of the universe

while a poem is penned
with every surge of current
from gentle slopes of sandy beaches
out of the rise and fall of reefs
from the passion of the waves
and the silence of the deep.