Loading...
Loading...
Click here if you don’t see subscription options
Kathleen RooneyMay 22, 2006

Brick-thick walls, portholes, circular doors,
cold bolts to ensure you’ll stay sealed in during the plunge,
the pressure, the absence, the bends, the hanging
like a pendulum in your tiny steel room.
It will shiver your timbers.
It will shatter your self. It will look like the blue-black pit-mouth
of hell, & you won’t see or hear or smell a single earthly thing.
No street noise. No sex, sweaty & scrambling. No phone. No family.
Nothing to gratelike sandagainst your nerves,
& that’ll be okay with you,
& you’ll love your bathysphere. You’ll love the queer fish
with no eyes, nor any need for them & the creatures whose bodies
are galaxies of light. You might listen to your wristwatch ticking
in the chamber & remember how Aristotle said whosoever
delights in solitude is either a wild beast or a god,

but you’re neither. He was wrong. You’ll hate Aristotle.
You want the tremendous mystery. The ocean. God.
Want to stare it in the face. Want to feel no fear.
Quiet, so quiet. You’ll long to go deeper.
At the bottom, you hear, it’s light and clear.

Comments are automatically closed two weeks after an article's initial publication. See our comments policy for more.

The latest from america

The 12 women whose feet were washed by Pope Francis included women from Italy, Bulgaria, Nigeria, Ukraine, Russia, Peru, Venezuela and Bosnia-Herzegovina.
"We, the members of the Society of Jesus, continue to be lifted up in prayer, in lament, in protest at the death and destruction that continue to reign in Gaza and other territories in Israel/Palestine, spilling over into the surrounding countries of the Middle East."
The Society of JesusMarch 28, 2024
A child wounded in an I.D.F. bombardment is brought to Al Aqsa hospital in Deir al Balah, Gaza Strip, on March 25. (AP Photo/Ismael abu dayyah)
While some children have been evacuated from conflict, more than 1.1 million children in Gaza and 3.7 million in Haiti have been left behind to face the rampaging adult world around them.
Kevin ClarkeMarch 28, 2024
Easter will not be postponed this year. It will not wait until the war is over. It is precisely now, in our darkest hour, that resurrection finds us.
Stephanie SaldañaMarch 28, 2024