VERSE

...My toes stretch and recoil from all this knowledge, sensing the deeper cold, the darkening layers I cannot know, and my breath comes short, fearing, until I roll back upwards into the dazzle and shatter the mirroring facets, striking shorewards back to the known sand and the harmless birds...

...All around me are changing surfaces green blue gold dull bright mirroring pieces of boats, bits of birds, sections of shore all distorted, dazzling, everything equal and bright on the skin of the water, whose innards churn darkly suggesting white bellies and teeth, the stately fronds of immense brown waving forests, seeds of salt bubbles with leather edges cutting coral and incurled oystershell baleful around sightless pearls and breast-pink nacreous shapes...