Darting, painted fish
in shallow waters
burst away before me
over the stones and shells half buried
in the sunny ocean floor
I never saw what startled them,
only the long thin shadow
of the thing that touched
my shadow as it slid into other shadows
The rest of the afternoon I crouched
under a flowering flamboyant tree,
shaking, with no abstract words
to describe my brush
with a mystery of the universe