One thing you learn when you
scuba dive to the cold
squeeze of the ocean floor
is that everything is moving—

sea fans undulate, sand skiffs
from the peaks of a wet desert
and even the endless blue
of the water shifting from azure
to cobalt to lapis and back again
while cerulean, sapphire, and teal
coruscate above, the light lure.

It’s like when I sit on my back
porch in the woods a half
mile from the river which feeds
the sea and hear the wind
roaring overhead, a
great eel train speeding
across the stretching green
land of the forest’s reach

where grandfather
beech, aspen, and pin oak bend and
stretch and sweep—old gorgonians,
those colonial cnidarians—across
an endless blue dotted with
white cloud anglers waiting.

Andrew Jeter has been a high school English and film teacher for 19 years. He holds a BA in English and Creative Writing, a Masters in English Education, and a PhD in English Composition & Applied Linguistics. He has lived in North Africa, Southeast Asia, Central Europe, and North America with five dogs and one husband.