I put on my aqua-lung and plunge,
Exploring, like a ship with a glass keel,
The secrets of the deep.Ý Along my lazy road
On and on I steal --
Over waving bushes which at a touch explode
Into shrimps, then closing rock to the tun of the tide;
Over crabs that vanish in puffs of sand.
Look, a string of pearls bubbling at my side
Breaks in my hand --
Those pearls were my breath!.....Does that hollow hide
Some old Armada wreck in seaweed furled,
Crusted with barnacles, her cannon rusted,
The great "San Philip"?Ý What bullion in her hold?
Pieces of eight, silver crowns, and bars of solid gold?

 

I shall never know.Ý Too soon the clasping cold
Fastens on flesh and limb
And pulls me to the surface.Ý Shivering, back I swim
To the beach, the noisy crowds, the ordinary world.

 

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Coral Reefs - developed by Kristen Treadway, Jenny Mavis, T. J. Beck, & Jim O'Keefe

This page submitted by the St. Norbert College Ocean Voyager Program
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