<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=389890" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>In the Glass-Bottomed Boat</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">In the glass-bottomed boat<br>of our lives, we putter along<br>gazing at the other world<br>under the sea-<br>that world of flickering<br>yellow-tailed fish,<br>of deadly moray eels, of sea urchins<br>like black stars<br>that devastate great brains<br>of coral,<br>of fish the color<br>of blue neon,<br>& fish the color<br>of liquid silver<br>made by Indians<br>exterminated<br>centuries ago.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">We pass, we pass,<br>always looking down.<br>The fish do not<br>look up at us,<br>as if they knew<br>somehow<br>their world<br>for the eternal one,<br>ours for<br>the merely time-bound.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The engine sputters.<br>Our guide-a sweet<br>black boy with skin<br>the color of molten chocolate-<br>asks us of the price of jeans<br>& karate classes<br>in the States.<br>Surfboards too<br>delight him-<br>& skateboards.<br>He wants to sail, sail, sail,<br>not putter<br>through the world.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">& so do we,<br>so do we,<br>wishing for the freedom<br>of the fish<br>beneath the reef,<br>wishing for the crevices<br>of sunken ship<br>with its rusted eyeholes,<br>its great ribbed hull,<br>its rotted rudder,<br>its bright propeller<br>tarnishing beneath the sea.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'They sunk this ship<br>on purpose,'<br>says our guide-<br>which does not surprise<br>us,<br>knowing how life<br>always imitates<br>even the shabbiest<br>art.<br>Our brains forged<br>in shark & seawreck epics,<br>we fully expect to see<br>a wreck like this one,<br>made on purpose<br>for our eyes.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But the fish swim on,<br>intimating death,<br>intimating outer space,<br>& even the oceans<br>within the body<br>from which we come.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The fish are uninterested<br>in us.<br>What hubris to think<br>a shark concentrates<br>as much on us<br>as we on him!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The creatures of the reef<br>spell death, spell life,<br>spell eternity,<br>& still we putter on<br>in our leaky little boat,<br>halfway there,<br>halfway there.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Erica+Jong">Erica Jong</a><div class=q> <img src="https://www.citatepedia.ro/g/32share.png" style="float:left" alt="Share"> <script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=389890" data-title="In the Glass-Bottomed Boat de Erica Jong" data-description="In the glass-bottomed boat of our lives, we putter along gazing at the other world under the sea- that world of flickering yellow-tailed fish, of deadly moray eels, of sea urchins like black stars that devastate great brains of coral, of fish the ..."></div> </div> </div>

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