The Dive

This is from 2002, so delving deep into the sea of my youth.

The Deep

Underwater's where I long to be
Letting the waves crash over me
Nothing to hear but surging sounds
While cool clear water everywhere surrounds

Take me away
To the bottom of the sea
Leave this world's ills
High over me

Clean in the waves
In the water where I fly
Float gently back and forth
Watching fishes swimming by

Upon the seafloor
Smooth white sand where I lie
Like a dream where I'm naked
But needn't care why

Take me away
I need it today
Let's go play
At the bottom of the bay

Under the sea
Where I was made to be
Come in and see
There's space for you and me

Author's Note

Be kind, this is not meant to be brilliant. Just honest. It is also eleven years old. I'd like to think I have improved, but I refuse to hide my early work. I think it is important to see where I have come from.

Reviews

[Tina Louise UK]

Oh I love this..quite magical, I used to wish I was a mermaid when I was young...this brought back those feelings. Beautiful :) x

[Robert Tusitala O'Neill]

HA!! I love that this can inspire your mermaid dreams to come back again! I am in love with SCUBA diving, and yet I so rarely get to practice it. It is too dangerous to do alone, but I can't even find friends who are in the proper shape, with the right equipment, and available to go with me! It is really another world, and oddly a world where I feel I belong. This is honest longing in this poem, my wish to return to my home beneath the sea.

[Tina Louise UK]

Something I've always wanted to do, scuba dive...it's like another world down there. I've always been fascinated with mermaids, shame they don't exist lol....one thing I've always wanted to do is get up close and personal with a great white...find them fascinating!

[Robert Tusitala O'Neill]

I went shark diving with great whites outside of my home in the San Francisco Bay. Annoyingly though, since it was mating season, they really didn't want anything to do with me! I was pretty pissed, having spent a reasonably good deal of money to just hang out in a cage, miles from shore, seeing only the faintest outlines of great whites. They were all around me, of that I was sure. They left chunks of half eaten seals washing by me, but I never got to see one up close, even after I was practically hanging my head and arms and legs outside of the bars of the cage and begging them to come try a bite!

Please do go SCUBA-ing though. You will be so amazed you can't imagine. I always pictured what it would be like, and it still blew my expectations away! Do you swim very much? -I have been a swimmer since I was three weeks old, seriously, so I never remember learning to swim. It just feels like a natural extension of me, and diving is therefore the next logical step!

[Tina Louise UK]

I used to swim a lot when younger, haven't been for years now. I developed asthma so sadly I do not think I will ever get the chance to scuba dive. I would imagine you would have to have really good lungs. So jealous that you got to do that though, I would have been pissed too!

[Robert Tusitala O'Neill]

Well, you MAY be able to dive all the same...It is a strange thing. Heart problems are a no go, but asthma is not as much of a definite thing. You should try snorkeling with all the equipment first, to see how you do at that. There is a LOT of technique to snorkeling that most people don't know. It really is a skill, if you can master popping underwater with one big kick, then going down about 40 to 50 feet quickly, calming your heart so you don't use up your oxygen too fast, and then just hanging out down there...before jetting back up. The most important thing to get right is flipping your head upright as you hit the surface so you can breath through the snorkel instantly, instead of just gagging. Good snorkels should be very easy to clear of water.

Shark diving isn't normally very deep so they just give you a direct tube to the surface. I bet you could do it easily! Have you ever seen the movie "3 and Out?"

[Tina Louise UK]

I've not but I will give it a watch.. x

[Robert Tusitala O'Neill]

It is a great movie, and also British!