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The secret diver

Into the jeweled sea she dives,

Where ripples blaze upon unstable sand,

And giant oysters grin their bearded grins,

And anything that’s lost is close at hand.

Within the shells of nacre treasures wax,

Until they burgeon, huge and bright,

The sea their mother with its ebb and flow,

They glow like moons into the night.

She darts into the mollusk’s cave,

Takes up the pearl and holds it to her chest,

The mollusk closes like a shining door,

And traps the bird within its nest.

She curls up in her fleshy bed,

A girl in secret mollusk-womb,

Her iridescent shroud begins to knit,

A coverlet in oyster-gloom.

And when the shell next opens wide,

A shining warrior sleeps inside.