
Letter from the Bottom of the Pool
Location
the blue sky warps and curves
on the opposite side of the water's surface.
my last few bubbles of air escape,
slipping hastily to the clear, watery membrane above,
blurring the view of a new world,
a world i thought i knew but is now
strange and exciting.
i lie like a fish at the sea blue bottom,
absorbing strands of shimmery light
through my shaded goggles.
there's a brief moment where i know
i have surely sprouted feathery gills
and transformed into a sea creature,
with slippery webbed toes and hands
and purpled turquoise scales.
but the worn, knotted trees, wavy and distorted,
call from above, in dire need
of me to breathe their suffocating oxygen
and manufacture their life-giving
dioxide of carbon, and, well,
who am i to argue with such sound logic?
upwards and onwards, through ocean's ether
i fly, eyes locked on that azure sky
made novel by a few simple feet
of chlorinated water.
sputtering and gasping, i breathe in the new world gratefully.