I have another poem about amphibians of a different sort.
This is a poem in which two scuba divers are
making love underwater at about 100 feet among the Bahamian
reefs.
People frequently have technical questions about this.
You have to save those for later, if you would.
This is called "To Find a Private Place."
"He took her one day under the blue horizon,
where long sea fingers parted like beads, hitched
in the doorway of an opium den, and canyons maze the deep reef
with hollows, cul-de-sacs, and narrow boudoirs,
and had to ask twice before she understood his stroking
her arm with a marine feather, slobbery as aloe pulp,
was wooing, or saw the octopus in his swimsuit stretch one
tentacle and ripple its silky bag.
While bubbles rose like globs of mercury,
they made love mask to mask, floating with oceans
of air between them.
She, his sea geisha, in an orange kimono
of belts and vests, her lacquered hair
waving, as indigo hamlets tattooed the vista,
and sunlight cut through the water,
twisting its knives into corridors of light.
His sandy hair and sea blue eyes, his kelp-thin waist,
and chest ribbed wider than a sandbar,
where muscles domed clear and taut as shells,
freckled calories, flat brawny scallops the color of dawn.
His sea-battered hands gripping her thighs
like tawny starfish and drawing her close as a pirate vessel
to let her board.
Who was this she loved?
Overhead, sponges sweating raw color,
jutted from a coral arch, clown wrasses hovered like fireworks.
And somewhere an abalone opened its silver wings.
Part of a lusty dream under aspic, her hips
rolled like a Spanish galleon.
Her eyes swam and chest began to heave,
gasps melted on the tide.
Knowing she would soon be breathless as her tank,
he pumped his brine deep within her,
letting seawater drive it through petals
delicate as anemone veils to the dark purpose
of a conch-shaped womb.
An ear to her loins would have heard the sea roar.
When panting ebbed and he signaled OK,
as lovers have asked, land or water-bound since time
heaved ho, he led her to safety, shallower realms, heading back
toward the boat's even keel, though ocean still petted her,
cell by cell, murmuring along her legs and neck,
caressing her with pale, endless arms.
Later, she thought often of that blue boudoir,
pillow soft and filled with cascading light, where
together they'd made a bell that dumbly clang beneath the waves
and minutes lurched like mountain goats.
She could still see the quilted mosaics that were fish
twitching spangles overhead, still feel the ocean
inside and out, turning her evolution around.
She thought of it miles and fathoms away,
often at odd moments, watching the minnow snowflakes
dip against the window frame, holding a sponge idly
under tap gush, sinking her teeth
into the cleft of a voluptuous peach."