Overhead
Palm fronds slap at each other
Encouraged by the gently probing fingers
Of the island breeze.
The foaming white break
Two hundred meters offshore
Surges and sighs,
A perpetual rhythmic heartbeat.
It drums the coral below
With the same tattoo
It has played
for forty thousand years.
Closer,
Crystalline waters host a riot of fish
Darting and shimmering.
Some breach the surface
To leap into the afternoon humidity
As if they too feel the joy
Of paradise around them.
A village man with a proud face passes
His sarong festooned with hibiscus.
A real one, salmon-hued and buxom,
Blooms from behind his ear.
“Bula.” His smile is sincere and generous.
“Bula,” I reply.
A scouting hornet drifts lazily from palm to pandanus
Before settling briefly on my knee
I remain still as it ripples and preens.
The canola-hued segments of its body contrast sharply
With the green of the closely cropped lawn
And the myriad shades of blue as sea meets sky,
The horizon of my backdrop.
The hornet alights and I breathe deeply
In and out. In, out.
Until my breathing matches
That of the sigh of the ocean—
In and out
In, out.
In.
Out.