High Dive

The diver’s toes grip gritty matting,

while balanced at the platform edge.

Moments before thrusting into flight,

when muscular tension in his calves

asserts their insight against the board,

the diver absorbs force as a kind of error.

His body vaults and arcs up into light.

Seeming to linger there, in that substance

of all possible outcomes, it’s mistaken for a mind.

But the drag of so much air resists

what’s implied. Pressure strains the limbs

as if gravity will correct the misconception.

Because the body follows rather than fights

the pull, debate is a logical fallacy. Head

tucks, hands grasp shins, shaping the idea.

The body spins to define its meaning

by muscles that calculate a geometry,

a path curving to reflect the diver’s thoughts

back to him from the surface below.

It’s how friction serves as another premise

in reaching toward something that is not

yet understood. The dive closes as the body

opens to embrace its entry. Hands stretch out

to make a point, slicing air and water down

to essentials. Inklings ripple in the changing,

until the thinker meets up with his image on the water,

in a mutually consuming comprehension. There

they disappear below the surface, closing over

its initial error and articulating a splash

which the audience judges to be its best explanation.