Diving Bell

Sun carves passages to us
down below the flies
They've been falling for eight months
out of the rising sun
and just now arriving on the breeze
Thundering in squadrons
eager to tear flesh and shed blood

Then down beneath the wind
we swim in illuminated dust
learn to breathe it like gills
unsure if we would survive
were we ever to surface

The heat, we think, comes less
from the hunting rays of an indolent sun
It radiates from our persons
ensconced, as we are, like cosmonauts
treading the surface of a swiftly shifting world

Our pillars and edifice
rise around like a coral bed
for us to move through, silent, in shoals
pathing dusty swaths and eddies

But we do emerge at length
and we bleed out of the yards
leave the dust and heat
for sleep and sweaty dreams
of summer and salt water
of swimming, always swimming
down upon some ocean floor
flooding our new lungs with cool water