We packed a basket of blue speckled dishes and carried it
to the bank. My casting shade and I both heard it—a sound
like a cellarful of cellos coming from under water—the roof
of the reef—and the heavy cement bodies had the moon-
glistened surface of water that mirrors the stars and the dishes.
We lifted the dishes into the sand, and into the sand they sank.
The music was that of just one sphere, and my shade bristled
visibly at the dissonance of fish brushing their scales
along solemn and pocked human features. The notes
were whole. What is a key change but the cheap
sap that bleeds from trees tapped to keep time.
By then it was dark, and my shade feared a figure
sidling along the line that marked how far the dishes
had tilted, been trapped, how far they would tilt
until they turned over and moreover were turned
into drums. My own fear was the tide. In came the strings
of weeds. It marked a sea change, this longing for water
displayed by my shade. It stretched out from the outer banks
to the island covered in hooks upon which hung—by the holes
in their bakelite handles—the blue speckled pans of the past.
