Silent glissandos of bubbles swishing around marine creatures,silhouettes beguiling the cool ocean lair of fluorescent colorsthat blinds with sweeping currents. I swallow the chewing gum,hard brass pennies scoring an indentation in a cupped finger.Now, in these corridors of glass, hidden worlds behind them,lunar notes trickle down liquid scales. They are farawaygalaxies . . . Other music, pulse of movement, plays behindthat sheet of glass. The aquarium is a living organism,fluxing and developing its body, dissolving as fishand sharks gaze at the iridescent-bright corals. In mountingdances of being, we take photos. A gentle babble, chatteramongst us. I say that the shark with its finis leering at me. They leer and laugh at me in turn.

The reflection of the glass mirrors and magnifies their separatejoys. What, what must they think while the world outsidedrowns in rain, tinkling musically on tin roofs? Our dogcame up to us, bedraggled after a long night of chasing cats,the shimmering frenzy of quarks and atoms on hisstraw-laden hair. And this afternoon, fogengulfs our town with its dark childless reign.We escaped to this aquarium for less waterbut find plenty more in the flow of aquamarine.Earth’s sap is unknown to them, prehistoric creaturesalive since the dawn of time, now reduced to specks inwater, gushed by man. We have lost our dreaming and ournaïve believing that we could control nature—not harmony,a peaceful coexistence and thriving on this vast land—but loggers and poachers and thieves that reduce the majestyof these paperbark trees and tall blue mountains, spiresreaching up, up to the clouds, and animals all thriving in seas,knowing the barrier between life and survival, now trappedwith their pleading eyes and hollow, voiceless cry,grasping at a sort of eternity. Their hearts will foreverbe lifeless, never undergoing metamorphosis.

Cameras flash, SNAP! SNAP! Visceral yet ethereal,those lights dance around the aquarium, a portal to their dimension,a celestial, bewitching world of ocean’s priestly rule. Back home,that aura of magic, that solid elemental vitality,still pulses through me. Gripping my pen, I write:Silent glissandos of bubbles swirling around marine creatures . . .