We talk, you and  I, of  mindfulness, here in the world above           water, but what’s below is watchfulness,                      pure and simple: creatures trying not to be eaten,           creatures relentlessly prowling or simply waiting for meals to   cruise on by. Except maybe parrotfish.           Ever industrious, ever in motion, it’s hard to find one not                      chomping on Yucatán limestone reefs. What we see as           dead, bleached coral or crusted limestone shelves, for them is re-embodied Fish Delight. Which means I find them by           eavesdropping. Ah, those castanet choruses clicking, clacking,                      a coven of  promises leading me on until there:           below my mask and snorkel, a dozen or more upside-down Princesses sway as one, in their pink and blue checkerboard           gowns, their long, long dorsal crowns                      cobalt-striped, and turquoise, and fuchsia—useless—           no Prince to be found, not even in fish identification books, just me and my ardor. Bewitched, each day I hang, transfixed,           above them in a slightly different                      place in that once-pristine, once-undiscovered Yal-Ku lagoon,           its cradling mix of salt and fresh water letting me hold myself, and time, and the rest of the world           stock still. Sometimes I’m even luckier: out of the deepest                      shadows (as out of my book) ventures           the shy Midnight Parrot, a constellation of neon blue mosaic scrawled on its head, its body—two feet long—           as dark as blue can get and still                      not be black, its parrot beak (that family           trait) munching rocks and shitting sand. Puffs of it, great big clouds of  it, murking the water until           finally settling down                      (it’s how, some scientists           say, sandy floors of  tropical reefs are born). But had I dared the slightest move, my Midnight           would have, just like that, become Dawn.                      And so it could have been, as well, with that one           tremendous fish, secretive, off at the edge, among the maze of  boulders piled on boulders, broken sandstone           columns, deep channels between them, there—                      in a shaft of  sun, the end of all my seeking           and what I hadn’t known I’d sought—three feet long, at least and all alone, clown-sized lips and eyelids the brightest possible aqua           blue in an orange-gold face,                      the way a child might rub its mother’s most dramatic           eye shadow onto the most unlikely places: forehead, cheeks, even the outermost edges of  every single           emerald-green fin, even the edge of  the deep red tail, its tips                      turned up at the corners—that tremendous fish was eating           nothing, that fish wasn’t moving at all, except it turned its head and one tremendous eye caught mine. And held it. Taut.           Oh, I almost stopped                      breathing. And the fish stopped           everything, too, except for slowly pulsing gills—opening, closing, opening, closing—in sync with my own           pounding heart. Was I                      the watcher or the watched? How long did we stay           like that, hooked to one another, held in water’s palm, as through my every cell, over and over, rang Rainbow, unstoppable           Rainbow, until I had no beginning, I had no end,                      Rainbow I was and happily would           be still, had not a wayward cloud blundered in.