Emanuel Carter Poet Free verse

Sounding and Diving

SOUNDING & DIVING  

A man remembers
for the rest of his life
the details of the boat that
hauled him to safety from a
faltering ship
He remembers, too, the loquacious friend
with the comforting words and sincere concern
who in time of crisis fashioned an assistance
self-serving and false – an exquisite life raft
on a very short rope

She always said she was in transition
as if the backward somersault one-and-a-half
gainer, jack-knife performance is a redefinition
of the gravitational relationship between the edge
of the cliff and the sparkling surf in the
inlet below

In occasional dreams, he thinks he’s an orca,
breaching and plunging in turbulent water, a tall
dorsal fin on a broad black back, the teeth of
intelligence in a sea full of sharks, the powerful
advantages of warm blood over cold

And nearing the beach in the cool, hidden cove
and the exhausted lonely woman asleep on the
rock, he resolves to disturb her, take her into
the water, teach her the difference between diving
and sounding, convince her that life with a large
carnivore, whose savage affections can be fiercely
displayed, is a safer proposition than the acrobatic
aesthetics of tumbling and falling through the 
angles and trajectories of perpetual transition
between the high craggy cliffs and the 
treacherous surfs of our uncertain lives

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