Diving into the Wreck

First having read the book of myths, / and loaded the camera, / and checked the edge of the knife-blade, / I put on / the body-armor of black rubber / the absurd flippers / the grave and awkward mask. / I am having to do this / not like Cousteau with his / assiduous team / aboard the sun-flooded schooner / but here alone. // There is a ladder. / The ladder is always there / hanging innocently / close to the side of the schooner. / We know what it is for, / we who have used it. / Otherwise / it is a piece of maritime floss / some sundry equipment. // I go down. / Rung after rung and still / the oxygen immerses me / the blue light / the clear atoms / of our human air. / I go down. / My flippers cripple me, / I crawl like an insect down the ladder / and there is no one / to tell me when the ocean / will begin. // First the air is blue and then / it is bluer and then green and then / black I am blacking out and yet / my mask is powerful / it pumps my blood with power / the sea is another story / the sea is not a question of power / I have to learn alone / to turn my body without force / in the deep element. // And now: it is easy to forget / what I came for / among so many who have always / lived here / swaying their crenellated fans / between the reefs / and besides / you breathe differently down here. // I came to explore the wreck. / The words are purposes. / The words are maps. / I came to see the damage that was done / and the treasures that prevail. / I stroke the beam of my lamp / slowly along the flank / of something more permanent / than fish or weed // the thing I came for: / the wreck and not the story of the wreck / the thing itself and not the myth / the drowned face always staring / toward the sun / the evidence of damage / worn by salt and sway into this threadbare beauty / the ribs of the disaster / curving their assertion / among the tentative haunters. // This is the place. / And I am here, the mermaid whose dark hair / streams black, the merman in his armored body. / We circle silently / about the wreck / we dive into the hold. / I am she: I am he // whose drowned face sleeps with open eyes / whose breasts still bear the stress / whose silver, copper, vermeil cargo lies / obscurely inside barrels / half-wedged and left to rot / we are the half-destroyed instruments / that once held to a course / the water-eaten log / the fouled compass // We are, I am, you are / by cowardice or courage / the one who find our way / back to this scene / carrying a knife, a camera / a book of myths / in which / our names do not appear.