Home is where the dancing is.

A spontaneous decision.

Diving daily in the air force blue, still, port,

she relishes the completeness of the compressed silence at the chain-strewn bottom.

The heavy water slices like a warm knife through Foie-Gras, and

as she eases into its greasy secrets,

it feels as intrusive as a dead aunt’s bottom drawer.

Here be dragon detritus,

the spill of human histories sunk into the captured sea:

A baby buggy, three bicycles — and a huge roll of electrical cabling.

Some large fish carcasses. Many gossamer nets, bunched billowing –

murky, non-descript objects covered in downy fur; mildewed and not a little repulsive…

Surfacing next to the flat drag boat, she instructs colleagues clearly on the best position for the net -

quickly, — sooner to dive into the solid silence before the end of the shift.

Here is home.

Here she glides, rubber-clad sleek — dancing with the slow black sucker fish

under the stratified glitter beams of the reflected sun.

Her own silent disco.

This time…

This time, when the oxygen runs down and the tugging on the safety rope insists,

she takes off her mask.

As it spirals down to the bottom of the luxury harbour,

she gulps the foetid, meaty water into her lungs, hooks her flippers under a thick green iron chain

and calmly stares up as the oblong shadow of the rescue boat passes overhead

and keeps going.