Night Dive

By Samuel Green b. 1948 Samuel Green

Down here, no light but what we carry with us.

Everywhere we point our hands we scrawl

color: bulging eyes, spines, teeth or clinging tentacles.

At negative buoyancy, when heavy hands

seem to grasp & pull us down, we let them,

we don’t inflate our vests, but let the scrubbed cheeks

of rocks slide past in amniotic calm.

At sixty feet we douse our lights, cemented

by the weight of the dark, of water, the grip

of the sea’s absolute silence. Our groping

hands brush the open mouths of anemones,

which shower us in particles of phosphor

radiant as halos. As in meditation,

or in deepest prayer,

there is no knowing what we will see.

Poem copyright © 1998 by Samuel Green. Reprinted by permission of the author, Sam Green, from his book The Grace of Necessity, Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2008. First published in Cistercian Studies Quarterly, Vol. 33.1, 1998.

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Poet Samuel Green b. 1948

POET’S REGION U.S., Northwestern

Subjects Activities, Sports & Outdoor Activities, Nature, Seas, Rivers, & Streams

Poetic Terms Free Verse

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Biography

Poet and editor Samuel Green grew up in Washington State. After a tour with the Coast Guard, Green was educated at Highline Community College and Western Washington University, where he earned a BA and an MA.

Green’s poetry engages the Pacific Northwest landscape with accessible, elemental observations of life’s small turns. The author of numerous collections of poetry, including Washington State Book Award winner The Grace of . . .

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