I read this one to the youngest son the other day; sometimes, he will take a few minutes to humor me and let me read a poem to him. Since he was little, he’s always wanted to be a oceanographer. We’ve watched a seemingly unlimited number of documentaries on the sea, on oceanography, and on diving. So I thought that this was something he could, you know, get into.

So I read this poem, finish the final stanza, look up expectantly…..and I’m met with “I have no idea what that was all about.” To his credit, he did respond to my crestfallen expression by giving me a friendly pat on the arm, as if to say “Nice job, Dad. Now go back to your book.”

After a big sigh (from me) he did lean over and we went through the poem together, after which he did allow that it was pretty cool. Whether that was truthful or if he just wanted to mollify me, I don’t know. However, I do like this poem. Wreck diving scares me, but it is a way to go and touch a bit of history. Of course, it’s also incredibly dangerous. I think I’ll stick to the poem.

Edit: Yes, I know that the poem is much, much deeper than my discussion here; however, for terms of talking to a 14-year old I decided to stay at the surface level so to speak. When he goes to college and studies English he can learn all about the poem as a metaphor to discuss Rich’s rebirth imagery.

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 away 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.

–Adrienne Rich