Keeping Watch

Earlier today, we wound our way 

through lush lavender and green, 

bougainvillea cascading red down terra cotta walls.

A stuccoed portico covered round tiles

that spilled like pools of smooth latte 

around the curve of the pink pebbled drive.

The path around the house 

separated hibiscus from bird of paradise, 

split this shaded view of the distant ocean 

from mid afternoon sun.

Intermittent winds gusted hard, 

turning left out of Africa.

They blew harder still on the open terrace 

where brown fingers rubbed lime and salt onto glasses, 

their rims ringing with each twist 

of the hand.  

We witnessed the sea turn 

from jade to aqua then violet

while shaved ice melted into tequila.

Mammoth rocks jutted out of the water 

where longtails and cahows rested, 

keeping watch over ebb tide,

like us.  

Steel drums beckoned us down to the beach.  

We wove along the narrow path through sea grass 

onto a long pier that met the mound of late sun 

at the horizon.

The pictures we took show us in silhouette, 

orange spreading out over the water behind us. 

You can’t see our faces, 

only that 

black wind had whipped our hair out 

like the spine of the lionfish as it slid 

among crevices of a murky cave

far below low tide.  

Strange, there’s a safe abandon this far out over the water. 

Just under us waves writhe dark, foreign,

and tufts of plants with white tendrils waver 

like ghosts in slow motion.

Earlier our glass-bottomed boat slid over 

gnarled conchs and sporadic seaweed, 

and some fish like aliens walked the ocean floor.

They are below us here too, 

and more.  

This afternoon,

we had followed the flight of two lone seagulls

winging over turquoise swells,

white caps running like fingers over a key board.   

They had swooped down to fish 

from a school of grouper on the surface, 

then retreated. 

The cloudless sky had offered 

yet another empirical look,

to keep watch

over the incessant turn of  tides

and all that belongs below. 

© Susan Muse, 2013

Lionfish
Photo by Daniel Dietrick
Wikimedia Commons