The Dive

Coral Kingdom of the Sea
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This is a painting in progess. The artist has run out of his stock of paint. It’s only words and words are all he has, to paint your mind away.
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I dive into the emerald paradise
beneath the waves of a coral sea
Floating still in an octopuses garden
Shimmering in the shade
Sinking slowly into a polychrome forest
Of broccoli and pillar coral
Swaying in the current in symbiotic delight.
I turn and hover on the tip
of an underwater cliff
Kicking into the blueness
Falling, sinking, freefalling in space.
Bluefin tuna cruise by
Unicornfish swirl past like
currents made visible as waves
Lionfish with flared wings
Cruise upside down beneath a coral table.
Above, a pinnacle of coral
silhouettes each shelf against the swirling surface sun
A myriad forms explode
and form in the absense of gravity.
I swim on alone
caught in the spirit
of this divine fantasy

I swim with lizardfish and barfish
Hogfish and triggerfish
Even some foxface rabbitfish
play with bicolor parrotfish in gold and white.
A black spotted moray eel emerges
To inspect my head from behind
Then quickly darts into its dark coral cavern
Where the nightshift spends the day
And the dayshift spends the night.
Danger lurks even in beauty
Camoflaged in an extravagance of color
Of majestic creatures of the coral
I am in its midst, suddenly,
A school of silver-tipped shark
swims through the black swells
They glimmer pale silver
Dark eyes inspect the intruder
Pupils darker than darkness,
darkness through which they glide.
A barracuda yawns waiting for its prey
Not me, he’ll have to wait another day.
I swim on alone
caught in the spirit
of this divine fantasy

I swim on, up towards the electric sun
Mired in a dream
Where you need to move faster
But can’t.
I drift to the surface through clouds of fish
Guided by the rays of sunlight
Refracted through the emerald ocean
Away from the shadows on the seabed.
My time is done
The octopus sleeps
It will live to hunt another day
satisfied within the limits
of its existential needs.
I press my toes in the warm damp sand
And look back in wonder and awe
Was I really there
In the crucible of life
In the midst of a fantasia
A separate reality
A world beyond belief?