In the days of the first Aqua-Lung 
so few humans had descended to depths  
where senses become unreliable, hard to tell  
the raptures of nitrogen narcosis  
from realities of the undersea world.
 
I was ready to take the training with my son, 
despite fear of migraine, eardrum rupture, panic.  
The class was full. He did it on his own later. 
Images from the GoPro the closest I can come: 
descending through a school of jacks,  
a ray undulating over Caribbean corals,  
debris strewn by the entrance to the octopus den.  
The way he might look at photos from his childhood  
taken from before he can remember. 

The deeper into the motherhood dive, 
the more it messes with your mind:  
disorientation, euphoria, numbness, dread, 
the distracting song fish are singing.  
The Amazon is fertilized by dust of ancient diatoms  
blown by transatlantic winds from the African Sahara.  

Alison Hicks was awarded the 2021 Birdy Prize from Meadowlark Press for Knowing Is a Branching Trail. Previous collections are You Who Took the Boat Out and Kiss, a chapbook Falling Dreams, and a novella Love: A Story of Images. Her work has appeared in Eclipse, Gargoyle, Permafrost, and Poet Lore. She was named a finalist for the 2021 Beullah Rose prize from Smartish Pace, and nominated for a Pushcart Prize by Green Hills Literary Lantern, Quartet Journal, and Nude Bruce Review. She is founder of Greater Philadelphia Wordshop Studio, which offers community-based writing workshops.