Surface

The waters push backwards,
the undertow draws me down
beyond light, air and earth.
I fear the wreckage beneath me,
the carnage of broken clocks that spool,
the soft white bodies of the bloodless,
that snag with their waving arms.
Anchors set adrift and furred in
weeds that entangle and snare.
But better than the surface.

Still down,
the silence is shattering,
only the rush of water and the beat
of my waterlogged heart, thrumming in my ears.
Such cold solitude is beyond bliss,
it erases and anaesthetises as my eyes
adjust to the dark like a bottom feeder.
And all above the dance continues
on and on in joyless frenzy,
as the days wear out and the seasons scream,
and surface is all.