A Poem About Renewal

Everything is Brand New


Something our six-month old knows
by heart, looking up at a winding gull;
hypnotized by the movement
of a palm tree.

During a long sail on a catamaran
her eyes are up in the canvass and she startles
when it flaps. Later, anchored under the sun,

she rocks and sleeps while I take my own
cynicism and regret, all fifty years of it, and
for the first time with mask and snorkel
drop under this swelling sea.

The last of its dying corals move
in milky bliss – angelfish and fans, crowds
of undulating jewels with fins,

everything brand new to me. Then
five barracuda arrive, a sleeker design than I.
I wind between them and, suspended,
they watch me pass. Startled by their size, clumsy,

in their vanishing world, I swim through, hypnotized.