Taking the plunge

The boy in the photo hangs above the Atlantic
like a drop of rain from the edge of a leaf,
paused in mid-air between diving board and water
on tiptoe, arms spread like a dancer, balanced
between this moment  and the next.
He seems to delay, motionless,
where delay is forbidden,
where what's permitted is a plunge from past to future.
A camera clicks, he does not hear.
One day he will look at the picture and declare:
That's odd, I don't remember a thing.
Perhaps that dot in mid-fall
was not me at all.

Published in The Blue Guitar (Salmon Poetry 2011), You've Been Great (Smith/Doorstop 2008) and Snakeskin (Web, 2000)
​