Why 'underwater'??

It started as a poem title. And then it cropped up again in some song lyrics. The idea of plunging in, of leaping into a new element. The idea of depth. The metaphor is commonplace enough. It seems to be a useful one for a lot of ideas and experiences I've had lately, and things, hopefully, still to come.

But I still don't like getting wet that much, on the literal level. But, as the song lyrics say, "You can't avoid the heavy rain."

Or as Randall Jarrell said: "A good poet is someone who manages, in a lifetime of standing out in thunderstorms, to be struck by lightning five or six times; a dozen or two dozen times and he is great."