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