A phenomenon, from 7:27-7:46am.

Morning light, reflected, fills the pillared house across from me with brilliant water.

The pillars are only a gateway.  The bay lives inside!

Not our laws of nature.

The house is surrounded by trees.  Nested. 

The Panettis are coated in light-filled water surface.

At 7:35, peak reflection, they wade to the fridge, wade to the table.

The dog in the backyard knows it’s coming, finds himself lifted, starts to paddle…

And for me, to live alongside trees and water.  The bay with all its behaviors.  These combinations.  To watch it all through the blowing branches of a palm. 

Huge clouds, massive, ethereal.  Divine hippos.

Thick liquid silver.

The trees at different distances swaying in rhythm.

People out early, rowing, gliding.  In front of them, speed-walkers.

True meaning of a dream house!  The prices on that mirage-laden peninsula must be…

The approach of water, then pillars, then water beyond.  The shimmer in time with the branches.  Reminds me of something…

But vertical.  Midnight.  I’m 14.  On the narrow path between river and canal.  On both sides trees go down to water, leading deeper to trees with stars between leaves.  For more miles than I can walk, this realm is a thin crust of floating water, with air above and below.  Utter stillness.  I am living in another universe!

A creature, unformed, a tadpole or fawn, stands in the shower spray.

Puts coconut on its amorphous body, coffee on its face.

Becomes a fabulous beast.  Scent of the body in the nostrils, scent of the face. 

Goes out into the world, into ancient Greece.  Is seen by the sibyls.  Becomes legendary, recorded later in bestiaries.

Is part of the collective unconscious, summoned every once in a long while by a painter or sculptor.  Appearing in a dream…

The tadpole or fawn turns up the force of the spray, washes clean. 

Now musk on its body, citrus on its face.  Both in the nostrils. Smooth on the body, gritty on the face.

Feels its own unlikely existence.  It works!  The transition rooted and flowing from the collarbones…

Goes forth naked onto the subway.  On four legs down the aisle, hooves clattering.  Finds a seat.   Shines.  Even in New York, people stare.  Smile, shiver.

In the shower, it continues to live, the lifespan goes on.  Studying the swirling steam, deflected spray…

Runs out onto the plains.  Unique, but not lonely.  The creature of coconut and coffee galloping alongside.

It’s all one, and we see how it happens.  The tropical rain is pelting the trees, the grass, falling into the bay, water into water.  We open the window, and the smell of all that enters.

On other days, we see rain in the distance–low clouds, and spotlights of misty arrows connecting sky and earth, choosing the trees and water out there somewhere.

The undulating line of treetops is so easy to trace with our eyes.  Just one or two curves.  The treetops meet…empty space.  The air is tinted pale watercolor blue.

Can there be such a thing as an inviting wall?  The dense and healthy trees are reflected en masse in the bay, sometimes like a tide of green algae, but most often as shadow on silver.

And all this—trees, water, sky–we can grab in a ball with our fists, and cram into our mouths, shove into our skulls, decorate our bodies with it like war paint.  Or we can just gaze primly, or look vacantly up from our work.

Is it me, or is the palm tree in our window taller?  We see only the very top, 5 or 6 swaying fronds and the tip of the stem.  With the recent storms, has it all shifted upward, do we need to mark a new line for our boy on the sky?

Our boy with his messy hair.  We see only the top of his head, but it evokes everything, all our tenderness.  We keep him in sight, witness his life.  And the green parrots that perch, and blend, and look in at us…

I can’t take the parrots into the ball in my fist; it seems too violent.  But a few minutes later, when they’re gone, I can replace them with the memory, and mix that in– a new flavor.

We used to see only buildings.  Nothing could grow from those gravestones.  It rained but there was no sky.  And we, after a while, did not adapt.  We tried eyes with more upward range, retinas that detected the faintest green.  One year, nothing worked, and we were…failing.  Oh, this is what it feels like…

Now here, the few buildings are white and enfolded by trees.  They merge easily with the sky.  The eye accepts them.  In fact, they echo our white furniture, connect us, from deep in the room, to the horizon.

It’s all one.  This massive shot of juice in the window.  The view that brings us the day so we can’t miss out.  This softness that holds us.