Cave dive

He looks up through panels of light:
groupers sulking in threes, pre-orthodontic
limestone, the sky peering in from kitsch
turquoise slots like the lamp fittings
of his youth. He remembers being six,
lying on his back beneath a kitchen
chair, gazing up at his dad’s unmapped
nostrils, his mother’s skirt riffling
past like a spotted eagle ray. Underneath
the dining table, he found pencil marks:
a quarter-circle and two words underscored:
Possible Extension. At six, it was a code or,
perhaps, the solution to a code. At forty-five
metres, it takes a blue whale’s long blink
to recall what one plus one turns in to.
His slow mind thinks he’s got the knack
of surfaces, can pass through the swirling
halocline that keeps us from our pasts:
the fresh and the preserved. He’s back
in his father’s study, pouring a bag
of marbles across the rug. In the glow
from the tentacled lampshade, he holds
up his Bosser, sees himself swimming
in its spiral reef. Taking out his respirator,
he is either young or drunk. From his lips
he scatters balls of glass.