In The Glass-Bottomed Boat

In the glass-bottomed boat

of our lives, we putter along

gazing at the other world

under the sea-

that world of flickering

yellow-tailed fish,

of deadly moray eels, of sea urchins

like black stars

that devastate great brains

of coral,

of fish the color

of blue neon,

& fish the color

of liquid silver

made by Indians

exterminated

centuries ago.



We pass, we pass,

always looking down.

The fish do not

look up at us,

as if they knew

somehow

their world

for the eternal one,

ours for

the merely time-bound.



The engine sputters.

Our guide-a sweet

black boy with skin

the color of molten chocolate-

asks us of the price of jeans

& karate classes

in the States.

Surfboards too

delight him-

& skateboards.

He wants to sail, sail, sail,

not putter

through the world.



& so do we,

so do we,

wishing for the freedom

of the fish

beneath the reef,

wishing for the crevices

of sunken ship

with its rusted eyeholes,

its great ribbed hull,

its rotted rudder,

its bright propeller

tarnishing beneath the sea.



'They sunk this ship

on purpose,'

says our guide-

which does not surprise

us,

knowing how life

always imitates

even the shabbiest

art.

Our brains forged

in shark & seawreck epics,

we fully expect to see

a wreck like this one,

made on purpose

for our eyes.



But the fish swim on,

intimating death,

intimating outer space,

& even the oceans

within the body

from which we come.



The fish are uninterested

in us.

What hubris to think

a shark concentrates

as much on us

as we on him!



The creatures of the reef

spell death, spell life,

spell eternity,

& still we putter on

in our leaky little boat,

halfway there,

halfway there.