The Diver / W.W.E. Ross

The Diver

I would like to dive
Down
Into this still pool
Where the rocks at the bottom are safely deep,

Into the green
Of the water seen from within,
A strange light
Streaming past my eyes –

Things hostile;
You cannot stay here, they seem to say;
The rocks, slime covered, the undulating
Fronds of weed –

And drift slowly
Among the cooler zones;
Then, upward turning,
Break from the green glimmer

Into the light,
White and ordinary of the day;
And the mild air,
With the breeze and the comfortable shore.

~~
W.W.E. Ross (1894-1966)
from Laconics, 1930

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada]

W.W.E. Ross biography