Lobster Divers at La Jolla Cove

by Glen Vecchione

Dashed from small boats,
like plumb weights they hang just below
the rilled surface, and always at night;

young men, mostly, vacuum-sealed in vulcanized laminae,
22% oxygen in their lunchboxes, splayed
with traps and a lantern whose beacon sweeps
the crusted gloom.

Skittering creatures, startled
amidst orange corals, interrupt their scavenging.

And do they flee this death-light?--
The eels do, the manta; the anemones retract their
erectile selves into stubble blossom,

but the lobsters, stunned, are slow to recover
and fan the water thoughtfully
while plucked and packed, then spilled deckside
like clattering toys.

No wonder the hunt is licensed,
with fines for the pure sport of it.
According to weight: sold, eaten, thrown back,

so that some have survived many times
through the surfeit of their kind
this spectacle from caf e terraces:

phosphorant spokes underwater, tarred frogmen
hoisting up and plunging down again with exhausted joy,
piles of stalked eyes heaped
upon the grim, clockfaced scale.

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Glen Vecchione, an Internet programmer, lives in Escondido. His most recent book is First Prize Make-It-Yourself Science Fair Projects (Sterling Publishing). E-mail: G.Vecchione@motorola.com