Looking up from unframed canvas on a street vendor’s blanket, just off Costa Rica’s white sand, I thought you whispered. Now your green eyes continue to break silence. Enchant. Looking down, mermaid, your red hair stays combed, crowned with a lily
the color of your lips. Underwater, a conch shell sea phone perches in your left hand.
Three reef fish bubble by. An unruffled red rooster eyes the festivities. Art evaporates
air’s urgencies. Soundings, enigmas, meanings levitate from the deep.

Beachcomber art—
reminder of ancient
origin before midwifery’s
bare bottom slap. Blend
of all new twenty-six
dimensions. . . Playful
preconscious mystery
of each flowing moment,
as it slides into focus.
Reefs we scuba, yield
vital catch—real selves
aswim among colorful
objects of sure enough
and not enough.