“Failure is an option, but fear is not.” —James Cameron


stuff into your wetsuit
******* your BCD
from your regulator take two sips
excited you should be

we’re gonna scuba
       in Aruba
(did you say Cuba?)
I said Aruba

stare at the horizon
big step into the fray
double fist tap o’er your head
shows them you’re ok

we’re gonna scuba
       in Aruba
(did you say Cuba?) No!
I said Aruba

remember safety scuba
PADI rule of thirds a must
never hold your breath
or your lungs will surely bust

we’re gonna scuba (Yeah!)
       in Aruba
(did you say Cuba?) No!
I said Aruba

finally we descend
enchantment ‘neath the waves
turtles, eels, stingrays, sharks
scenes that mankind craves

we’re gonna scuba (Yeah!)
       in Aruba
(did you say Cuba?) No!
I said Aruba

we’re gonna scuba (Yeah!)
       in Aruba
(did you say Cuba?) No!
I said Aruba. Yo!


.~.~.~

Final thoughts in quintuplet couplets:

Water’s calm with clear blue sky
Summertime is nigh

Be sure to check your regulator
You can always thank me later

No more time for any rhyme
Dive five meters to escape the skeeters

If your mortgage is underwater
Are you certified to dive?

Sea Hunt was a favorite show
It’s great to be alive



© 2025 Mark Toney

Гром грохочет! Дождь — стеной.
В небе молнии сверкают...
Сильный ветер налетает.
Дождь примчался затяжной?
Скоро, скоро всё узнаем.

В городском дворе — аврал!
И машины завывают...
Дружно фарами моргают.
Смотришь — «телесериал».

Но светлеет неба свод —
Снова голуби летают.
И дождя не замечают...
Посмотрел я — дождь прошёл!

Кап-кап-кап — на подоконник.
Посветлело. Дождь прошёл.
Ну а что всё это было?
Полчаса — и всё вдруг смыло!
Дождь покапал и ушёл,
Пошумел он — побеждённый!

Вот и солнышко сияет.
Ну, как не было дождя...
Только лужицы сверкают,
Да асфальт блестит слегка.

Ох! Вороны всполошные —
Всё о чём-то: «кар да кар»...
Кружат танцы вековые —
Всё, как времена былые.
Так кружится белый свет.

Кружат грозы, кружит время,
Ненаглядный белый свет!
Не узнать другое племя.
Время есть?.. Уже и нет!

Annotation:
This poem captures a summer thunderstorm as it happens: the roar of thunder, flashing lightning, the chaos of the city — and then, just as suddenly, silence, light, and reflection. From fleeting raindrops to eternal time, the verse moves from vivid everyday images to timeless meditation on life’s transience.

You never knock, just crash through ceilings in thunder heels.
You ghost me with fog, flirt with the moon,
and leave pollen on my doorstep like cryptic love notes.

I have seen you dressed in monsoon silk,
barefoot in sandstorms,
wearing mountain ranges like shoulder pads
and rivers like mascara that never runs.

You are chaos in couture,
a vine that strangles and a breeze that forgives.
You kiss with oxygen,
but you bite with bees.

I tried to tame you once,
built fences, trimmed hedges,
named you “landscape.”
You laughed in wildfire.


I love you in drought and flood,
in cracked soil and overgrown jungles.
I love you when you bloom without permission,
when you rot with purpose.

So here I am
kneeling in your dirt,
offering my plastic sins,
asking for nothing
but one more sunrise
and the mercy of shade.

The end of certainty is not the end of the world,
but the dawn of a deeper vision.
We believed the earth was solid, the heavens unshaken,
the laws eternal and unmoving.
Yet beneath every stone lies movement,
within every silence—an echo of change.

Certainty was our shelter,
but also our prison.
It closed the doors of imagination,
it chained the infinite to the finite.
Now the walls have fallen.
We see the universe not as a machine,
but as a mystery—
a flowing river of becoming.

The end of certainty is the beginning of freedom.
To live without anchors,
to walk among paradoxes,
to welcome uncertainty as the companion of truth.
In the vast sky of unknowing,
we discover the stars of possibility.

Here begins our journey—
from the ruins of the absolute
to the open horizon of the infinite.