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I would like very much to go
snorkeling with you –

Our pale, East Coast bodies floating like foam
in a cobalt salty sea

Where, fluttering alongside schools of flatfish,
darling you and I would speak

A new language

of air bubbles and gestures, pirouettes and
pipe-delayed gasps

as electric eels writhe below.

Wearing flippers I am three feet taller, and swimming side by side we see
eye to eye

We breach for air, and as you adjust your goggles, I
may do the unthinkable,
or, at least, surely the un-advisable

And dive
headfirst!

with eyes squeezed shut snorkel unattached arms extended with
eager/desperate hands wide open:

to grasp and own
whatever comes my way.

Bubble bubble bubble, you say.

Somewhere, a shark
smells blood.

Jellyfish tear like Kleenex
around our pointed knees.

In the end, perhaps we will arrive washed up
on some South American beach,
some where

Besmattered with barnacles, tentacles, starfish, the

flotsam and jetsam
of the century

And they will say ah,
it is a shame they swam out so far,
ah it’s a
shame a
shame shameshame

But I will have been glad
to be here
with you
now:

With mountain ranges plunging below our waving fins
(hello hello hello,
goodbye, goodbye)

darkness, transparency, warmth and cold
our heads bobbing at the dividing line