We talk, you and I, of mindfulness, here in the world above
water, but what’s below is watchfulness,
pure and simple: creatures trying not to be eaten,
creatures relentlessly prowling or simply waiting for meals to

cruise on by. Except maybe parrotfish.
Ever industrious, ever in motion, it’s hard to find one not
chomping on Yucatán limestone reefs. What we see as
dead, bleached coral or crusted limestone shelves, for them

is re-embodied Fish Delight. Which means I find them by
eavesdropping. Ah, those castanet choruses clicking, clacking,
a coven of promises leading me on until there:
below my mask and snorkel, a dozen or more upside-down

Princesses sway as one, in their pink and blue checkerboard
gowns, their long, long dorsal crowns
cobalt-striped, and turquoise, and fuchsia—useless—
no Prince to be found, not even in fish identification books,

just me and my ardor. Bewitched, each day I hang, transfixed,
above them in a slightly different
place in that once-pristine, once-undiscovered Yal-Ku lagoon,
its cradling mix of salt and fresh water

letting me hold myself, and time, and the rest of the world
stock still. Sometimes I’m even luckier: out of the deepest
shadows (as out of my book) ventures
the shy Midnight Parrot, a constellation of neon blue

mosaic scrawled on its head, its body—two feet long—
as dark as blue can get and still
not be black, its parrot beak (that family
trait) munching rocks and shitting sand. Puffs of it,

great big clouds of it, murking the water until
finally settling down
(it’s how, some scientists
say, sandy floors of tropical reefs are born).

But had I dared the slightest move, my Midnight
would have, just like that, become Dawn.
And so it could have been, as well, with that one
tremendous fish, secretive, off at the edge, among

the maze of boulders piled on boulders, broken sandstone
columns, deep channels between them, there—
in a shaft of sun, the end of all my seeking
and what I hadn’t known I’d sought—three feet long, at least

and all alone, clown-sized lips and eyelids the brightest possible aqua
blue in an orange-gold face,
the way a child might rub its mother’s most dramatic
eye shadow onto the most unlikely places:

forehead, cheeks, even the outermost edges of every single
emerald-green fin, even the edge of the deep red tail, its tips
turned up at the corners—that tremendous fish was eating
nothing, that fish wasn’t moving at all, except it turned its head

and one tremendous eye caught mine. And held it. Taut.
Oh, I almost stopped
breathing. And the fish stopped
everything, too, except for slowly pulsing gills—opening,

closing, opening, closing—in sync with my own
pounding heart. Was I
the watcher or the watched? How long did we stay
like that, hooked to one another, held in water’s palm,

as through my every cell, over and over, rang Rainbow, unstoppable
Rainbow, until I had no beginning, I had no end,
Rainbow I was and happily would
be still, had not a wayward cloud blundered in.

poetry-magazinePot of Gold

poetry-magazineSestina

Pot of Gold

Sestina