broken from Key West’s dead reef, razor-sharp. Asymmetrical proof of the watery ancestral playground of our birth. Yearly, I bleach you free of daily confusion’s smudge,
as you shift position along my tidal poetry shelf. Rawboned you filter serpentine self -fantasies presented in person or digitally. We existentialists learn early to make parallel notes: thoughts of the witness dispensed judiciously on one side, juxtaposed to postures statements, gestures, dreams on the other. We follow your model coral—transparent, porous witness to calcifying flash-backs and flash-forwards in psycho-spiritual deliberations. Whatever grows in this liminal space, we’d wish to be nutritious—clear
of pollutants— where the colorful and playful may find relief.

Landlubber coral
displaced bright white
whirl of once living
biomass nee backbone
of new wishes,
aims for the next
fluid moment.