Free Dive

Now I cannot walk
    under the leafy bower of elms
without recalling those sublime
subsurface frolics at Lake Pillsbury,
Spooning & rolling & tucking
Into cold secret green rooms
or entering the undulating darkness
    of seagrass canopies,
A forest of long curving stems
Melding into further mystery---
Headlong I plied my passage
Through the silent labyrinthe of leaves
Peopled with the movement
    of small translucent fishes
Who like me larked weightless
In the glimmer of wavy light--
At ten feet & equalise my ears
And stroke plunging to twenty-two feet,
Where the sea-gardens array themselves
    in fields of white rippled sand,
The silver shining surface far above,
I turn & roll lewdly unclothed
    exhaling a stream of bright bubbles,
Surprising a school of big bass
Trawling the rock garden bottom--
Then with sublime slowness
I drift upward
Into a shimmering halo of golden light
through the high twine of branches,
Calmly I break the blue surface
    and float on my back breathing deep,
Studying the prisms of cirrus ribbons
Miles overhead.