You stood on your rock and I stood on mine,
Eyeing each other,
Some twenty feet apart, and wasn’t it fine
That what came between us
Was first a purple dottyback, then a pink pack
Of fairy basslets, a bright, black-
Eyed jack, some green
And blue parrotfish, a leathery gray
Solitary grouper,
And a curious angel, nosing you, me,
Its streaming yellows sharper
Even than, fifty feet above, that sun we,
Escaping quickly, left on the sea-
Ceiling, steaming?
This Issue
May 31, 2001