I drift beneath a grammar of sharply etched shapes <br />and clear contrasts. Eddies dance as if to mock <br />my dumb back as I pass under a cove’s calm surface. <br />Sometimes a seabird’s shriek thuds through thick <br />water. I feel forever dark weight of water. <br />It’s as present to me as my own body as I push <br />through it with ridiculous flippers. One day I will <br />just stop and dropp to ancient mud; <br />clouds of mud will mushroom out about me, swirl, <br />disappear on currents. I’ll roll on one side <br />with one eye buried in muck and one still staring <br />at black water mottled with insinuations of light. <br />A sound will grow in me, rise out of my <br />mute years, build into a moaning like a sunken <br />ship’s crushed hull, then race into a scream smothered <br />by seawater, seaweed. A white bird will cock its head, thinking <br />it’s heard a fish, dip to the surface, and seeing nothing, <br />sail back to bright bluffs. I will have become <br />an inundated continent of grief, overwhelmed.<br /><br />Hans Ostrom<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/sea-monster/
