Fragments From Floyd

They have them in the Florida clear-water springs: glass-bottom boats. Of course they do. It is under you where the mermaids swim and the bluesilver fish ripple and shimmer as they hold their place in the current of cold water from underground. You couldn't possibly take it all in peering over the edge of the boat or peeping through a tiny opening in the side.

And so I fantasized all the way from Roanoke to LaGuardia about riding in a glass-bottomed USAir jet. But of course, my dream unfulfilled, I was thankful that, by sheer good fortune, I was assigned a window seat and happy too for the clear air, finally, that had replaced summer's haze. At no more than fifteen thousand feet, the entire trip was a spectacle. My inner voice narrated the complete passage, punctuated with exclamations, question marks and ineffable sighs. I suffered terribly from the inverse form of rapture of the deep and wasn't sure if I'd read a single line in my magazine I held in my lap.

It was water magic that I will remember. My tiny porthole window faced directly into the sun, not very high in the sky at our midmorning departure. The varied terrain of man and nature's working below and just beyond was dark and somber in the autumn light. But our low flight path and the sun's glancing rays conspired to ignite all waters, tiny and large, globular and sinuous, as we raced past.

At that exact point in space and time where the plane's round window and my wide eyes intersected the reflected light from the water, it was as if each tiny creek and meandering stream suddenly became a lit fuse. Quicksilver liquid light coursed along each twist and turn, sometimes dozens of threads at once, at the very speed of our passage. Molten silver threads and sheets appeared out of the dark forests and mudflats that revealed themselves like pages of a continuous scroll, scene after scene of a magic world. And then as quickly behind us as we passed, the waters went dark again, and the magic ended.

But who could say what would happen next! I put away the magazine in my lap, did a few neck stretches, and resumed my post.