|Penny Hilton|
Nothing in New England prepares you for the yellow tang
blooming quick bouquets around you in Hanauma Bay.
As wide open as your eyes go, there is yellow left over.
Golden rod is too rusty, buttercups too bland,
dandelions too messy, even en masse;
Goldfinches and flickers too shy as they sky away,
the sun in its distance, too understated.
The yellow tang of Hanauma keep their colors clean as acrylic,
blazed with black, angling like boomerangs,
unexpected as an underwater Alice In Wonderland,
with the laughter left in, and all the fear flushed out.
Rocking in reef-top waters, hearing only my own breath
(and the parrot fish chipping at the corral)
I saw the tangs carillon their color…
and wakened to the brightest lullaby a New England baby never heard.
