Sunday May 2nd, 2010

The exercise:

Your prompt today: the dive.

My scar is beginning to itch. I'm having difficulty remembering that's a sign of healing.

Mine:

He slips into the water
With his life strapped to his back,
A camera in his gloved hands,
And a smile ready to crack.

As he floats gently downward
In the watery sunlight,
He doesn't see the hunter
Who is grinning with delight.

The reef is captivating,
He can't seem to look away,
And so the shark closes in,
Ready to dine on his prey.

But a sudden camera flash,
A frantic lurch to the right,
And shark head meets jagged rock
And he's swimming for the light.

As he breaches the surface,
Not at all like a dolphin,
He thinks of his waiting wife,
And the tears that could have been.

2 comments:

Greg said...

Wow, that's a great poem! What inspired it? I think the second verse is my favourite, it reminds me of scuba diving, and the third verse just re-emphasizes that. The second line of the last verse made me smile as well.

The dive

Silver bubbles effloresce
Air, rising to the surface,
Escaping from the dive
That takes the slim man down.
He plunges, knife-like,
Through the perfect blue,
His body straight, unmoving,
Striving for the depths.
The water cools and seems to thicken,
The blue darkens towards black,
The man attenuates his dive,
Levelling out, finning his feet.
His lungs, filled to bursting
At the surface now seem barely
Sufficient. His eyes are bright
And he starts back to the air.
Such a short time, a transience,
Moments too short to dwell in another world.
To join the aqueous life,
And be someone else for a while.

Marc said...

Glad you liked it :)

We went to see Oceans (the Disney documentary) yesterday afternoon and I felt inspired to include it in my writing in some way or another.

That's a really, really lovely poem. I like the air escaping the dive and pretty much everything about the final four lines.