Little Yellow Fish
Little yellow fish,
you swim somewhere
in the turquoise Caribbean
that laps the reefs of St. John.
You slice ripply shafts of sun,
mouthing algae from the chalky ridges
of a brain coral.
Or maybe by now
you are in the belly of a red snapper.
But once
you were in my hands,
two cups of flesh
pooling your small finned body.
What am I
to make of the way
you stayed still,
let me stroke you?
You let yourself be
in the shadow
of my bobbing body,
beneath my chest, within hands
held loosely
in the posture of prayer.
I gave you room to slip away,
my finger bones spread and rounded,
a leaky bathysphere.
You stayed. Each time
I stretched my arms out front like an arrow
and stroked, pushing water
to propel my body to shore,
I lowered my chin,
expecting to find you
gone, startled, washed away.
You stayed,
a constant yellow flame
flickering at my heart.
I want to think
it was kinship kept you with me
from the reef a hundred feet out
all the way to the glittering white beach -
that held you to my leviathan body,
snorkeled and alien - and not
some inkling that plankton
might spill from my mouth.
At the limit of your world,
I sat in two inches of warm, salty blue,
ran a finger the length of you
for goodbye,
and stepped back onto my dry world -
white, hot sand
that took the imprint of my foot.
I want to think
you would remember me
if I returned to your water,
that you would find me
again
as you did that day.