The Dive

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I.

They call it the Devil’s
Blue Hole, a circle of dark
in a cove of sweet blue
on an outer island
of the Bahamas.

The locals stay away
saying it’s cursed,
filled with the bones
of centuries of sailors
who drowned
on the reefs.

Flying face-first
down into dark,
free-diving is all
about going just there—
down a soul-sink

where it’s just
you in abyss,
where fear is a
cold eyeless eel
wrapped round
your guts.

But as you keep
diving the old
terror of sailors
melts into the
rapture of drifting
in salt womb,

a freedom our
surface words
can’t describe.

Words like Dive

or Die.

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II.

Hole became Home
at 223 feet with
a dozen yet to go.
One league I was
gaming for the American
record and the next
my heart squeezed flat
as a newspaper obit.

How surprising to step
over that…