Reef Traffic

I float where the Pacific keeps whispering
its unfinished sentences.

The sea rocks me-
up, down…
up, down…
a slow pendulum swung by the breathing swell,
while beneath me the reef broadcasts itself
on a frequency older than Hawaiian language.

Tik...tik...tak...tik...
Click-click...pop...crack...crack...

The traffic is alive.

A humu-humu-nuku-nuku-āpuaʻa patrols a coral cathedral,
its impossible flashing neon blue colors sparkle through kapu water
like broken pieces of a stained-glass sunrise.

Tik-tik.

A parrotfish arrives, emerald jaws
closing upon limestone centuries.

Crunch.

The sound blooms white.

Crunch, crunch…

Pillows of crushed reef billow from its mouth,
clouds of powdered calcium carbonate
lifting like underwater breath,
as though the coral has become cloudy weather.

I watch the sound.

I see its pale percussion
floating through shafts of sunlight,
snowfall in a tropical cathedral.

Tik...tik...click...pop...

A yellow trumpetfish hangs vertically,
a golden reed swaying among coral branches,
motionless except for the music surrounding it.

An angelfish flashes by-
one bright note painted with fins.

Every fish becomes another station
broadcasting the reef's endless static.

Click-click...tik...pop...crrrack...

The sea keeps lifting me.

Down into listening.

Up into light.

Down into listening again.

I forget the tube in my mouth.

I forget the mask pressed against my face.

I forget the shore,
the hour,
my own name.

Only the reef remembers me.

Its crackling enters my ribs,
its rhythms tuning my heartbeat
until my pulse clicks with theirs-

tik...tik...tik...

Above me, the sun writes slowly upon my back,
a silent fire I never notice.

It reddens my shoulders,
my neck,
my forgotten skin,

while below, another parrotfish crushes another century.

Crunch.

The white plume rises.

The static thickens.

The whole reef seems wrapped in invisible electricity-
not noise,

but countless tiny lives
striking the world
against their teeth,

until the ocean itself becomes
one immense,
humming,
clicking,
billowing signal-

always arriving,

never ending.