Uploaded August 2024 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago

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25 Swim the Ocean
Diving the Jetty Alone
1
The first thing you learn in SCUBA,
Is to never dive alone,
But I was young and bullet proof,
With muscles made of stone.
2
Panama City and Diving School,
On a weekend in eighty-two,
Got my dive gear at a pawn shop,
They’re not telling me what to do.
3
So it was off to the Jetty,
With all my fins and stuff,
My tank was only halfway full,
Heck, that is air enough.
4
Leaping off the quay wall,
Into water cold and dark,
I thought: Florida isn’t always warm,
And that I couldn’t see a shark.
5
Gravity minus buoyancy,
Began to twist me all around,
By the time I hit the bottom,
The tank had drug me upside down.
6
There was a current in that Jetty,
And adding to my cares,
It was as dark as a cave,
And I was running out of air.
7
I crawled along the bottom,
In the rocks to fight the motion,
Up the side to the quay wall,
To finish my swim in the ocean.