Snorkeling in Mexico

In a cave of chalk, the bats cling,
and some swoop. If you keep
your head down, you can

forget them; you can see yourself
clearly, chalk-gray hands and legs,
as if this is your real color, and
you’ve never seen it until now.

Your mask, your face in the water.
Look. There are tiny, colorless fish
darting through the one shaft of

dust-watered sun that lances down
from a hole in the roof of the cave
and unites everything, is the center,
the reason for all the life here.

Clearer than clear. Cleaner than clean.

At the edge, the mouth of the cave,
the people wait, your fellow tourists
who stepped out of the van, walked
down the farm path, like you, but
saw the bats and could not enter

this space, deep and cold, dark,
where you and your husband
drift in and out of the sun, until
you are no different from the fish.