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The diving board is a place of terror, at least to me, led
there until I would attempt a dive, again and then again.
I never saw someone injured diving from one or even
standing on one, but the image freezes throat breath and belly breath.
Panic sets in each time I try to dive even now, with words
on paper far from the water holes and boards and cliffs I feared.
Not diving, though, is not a choice. It’s where words pour from me
as if supernatural creatures wrenched them forth. I dive to live.
Without it—those days that I resist the climb—I am anybody. Maybe
I love words more than some, but other people’s words.
On sublime days, I read and hear and quote radical love,
leadership in action, speeches and published poems—admiring them.
But then the dive comes, and thought goes. I sense water bubbling
over head as I put dark marks on light, looking for my shadow.
I should be happy dives rarely claim me now, but I miss them mightily.
Imitation is no substitute. I live to dive.
This poem really intrigued me, Susan. First, it took me back to how terrified I was, age twelve, when my mother put me in a swimming class and, because of my age, they made me dive off the dock into the water. My mom said she could see every freckle right across the pool. I did dive, but turns out I had red measles, which then went to my eyes and I spent the rest of the summer in a darkened bedroom at my grandma;s house. Interesting to equate that diving with the diving off the cliff we take when we put our words to flight..........makes me think of writing in a whole new way. Always lovely to read you, my friend.
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