The Brazilian Cliff Diver

The Brazilian Cliff Diver


"There is no bottom to this."
Kim Addonizio's "Flood"


He dove hard and fast,
unlike other men,
and found the deepest part
so quick it took her breath away.
Some things always last,
and some go very, very fast.

She knew him when she saw his eyes across the barroom
and in those eyes, that tender crust of salt and crayfish ooze
dried to a golden crystal;
just there, at the end of the bar,
drinking a white liqueur--sipping it almost--
she knew then, just what he could do.

Remembering his brown body as he stood
rigid, then like a salmon caught mid-leap
a flutter of movement, and then the jump
the cliff's edge falling away
the turn, the arch,
but not too much--
and then the penetration,
surfaces slide aside
like the opennings of fleshy gills
rhythmically contracting waves
as he disappears within
the waters
and then the wait.

What would he find there, once he was inside?
What would be there, in the silence
and the crabshell ooze?
More colors than a gutted trout?
More tastes than at Captain Nemo's last buffet?
More deepening pressure than the weight of Earth's first ocean?
Who can say,
but at that moment, finally, his body twisted, began the turn,
and rose up from the depths.

Up, up he rose, past the thickness of the silt,
past the lounge room of some lost Titanic,
past the long-lost condominiums of Atlantis,
past the crabs, with their pale diaphanous shells,
past the scaly sea-worts, scarred and burned,
past the Korean pool-boy's form-
fitted Speedos, lost once in the undertow.

Up, up,
past the sleeping fish
the cliff diver rose,
like a Japanese pearl diver coming up for air
and there she was--
he found her like a catfish flopping on a table
and nothing needed to be said.

Even though her Portuguese was faulty,
his English was broken, barely knew a word,
things passed between them, like electric eels,
and cunningly they learned.