Bullying himself into survival
he burst upward through the water
like a cork float released
from depths imagination barely visits.
Could air be cleaner, sky more blue
than the immaculate dome that greeted him?
He lay like Christ on resurrection morning
when God's liquor kicked through the veins.
He was Adam in Eden as Eve
declared herself deliciously to him.
He was Beowulf guiding his blade
on the day Grendel died.
He floated in the oily gloss
and politely admitted to himself
it was good to be here.
The trinkets of his blood
yearned for self-expression,
the thoughtful diamonds of his brain
ached with the deceit of creativity,
and the crinkling of his toes and fingers
prompted him cautiously to dry land,
to safety and to livelihood (the yoke
of the wage-world) and to the beginning
of his breathlessness again.