Breathless Beneath Blue Silence
There,
if your spacesuit tears,
death awaits.
“Armstrong, when he arrived on the moon,
must have felt the same,
though this is only
a hundred meters.
Still,
I felt a kind of
nirvana,”
said Jacques Mayol.
There,
if your breath falters,
death awaits.
Though he returned
from the deep many times,
in the end,
he chose his final dive.
He chose a place
from which
there is no return.
Nirvana—
a state of release
from suffering.
They say
a restless mind
disrupts the breath.
Even in the depths,
he kept
his mind still.
But in truth,
deep within,
there were waves
rippling all along.
When you dive deep,
not a single bubble,
not a single ripple
can rise.
Whether the world
a hundred meters down
is suffering
or peace—
I wouldn’t know.
Nor can I say
whether the world of death
is suffering,
or peace.
Copyright © Shinsaku Ashida | Year Posted 2025
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