Night Dive

Down here, no light but what we carry with us. Everywhere we point our hands we scrawl color: bulging eyes, spines, teeth or clinging tentacles. At negative buoyancy, when heavy hands seem to grasp & pull us down, we let them, we don’t inflate our vests, but let the scrubbed cheeks of rocks slide past in amniotic calm. At sixty feet we douse our lights, cemented by the weight of the dark, of water, the grip of the sea’s absolute silence.  Our groping hands brush the open mouths of anemones, which shower us in particles of phosphor radiant as halos.  As in meditation, or in deepest prayer, there is no knowing what we will see.