When the light is just so, you can stand at the seawall behind the shrine to Our Lady of Charity in Coconut Grove and see clear to the bottom of Biscayne Bay.

There's a blanket of coins down there, every glint of copper and nickel an appeal to the fates. Hang around on a busy afternoon, and you'll hear the plop-plop-plop of pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters hitting the water in syncopated prayer. There is a scattering of dollar bills, too, and you wonder whether someone desperate enough might dive in.

Staring into the shallow water is meditation. This breezy spot behind the shrine, la Ermita de la Caridad, named for the patron saint of Cuba, is almost as poignant as the building itself, which resembles a 90-foot, mantle-covered Virgin watching over the sea.

El muro, the wall, is Miami's place of reflection. A site of constant rituals. Many people come here to cast off the thing that's bringing them down: a boyfriend's promise ring, a cane after an injury, the keys to a lost dream house.

The seawall's salving energy is what drew Carmen Penalva when she left a Miami-Dade courtroom recently and headed straight to la Ermita. Then she sat at the wall, head in hand, praying for her 15-year-old son.

''He was arrested for stealing, but he'll probably only get community service,'' says Penalva, a manager for an export company. ``I wanted the judge to be tougher. My son is cutting himself. He's depressed. He gets violent. And I'm a single parent who can't really handle him anymore.''

Penalva prayed to la Caridad and tossed seven pennies into the bay in the name of Cuba's Virgin of Regla.

''She is a mother. I asked for help with my son,'' she says. Penalva had scattered her father's ashes here 16 years ago. ``We did it when nobody was looking. This is the closest place to Cuba. This place represents a little bit of all of us.''

At the northern end of the seawall, where historic Vizcaya serves as a foreground to the glossy towers of Brickell Avenue, a stone Eleggua (the Santeria god known as the opener of paths) with cowrie-shell eyes gazes up toward the water's surface. At the southern end, near Mercy Hospital, someone's Santeria necklaces cling to a rock, a school of little silver fish brushing by the yellow and amber beads for Ochun, the blue and white ones for Yemaya.

Why would a believer part with his protective Eleggua or his sacred necklaces? Perhaps he died, and a loved one cast the artifacts away. Or did the believer fling them in some rage against the gods? And those white rose petals floating toward you -- were they plucked one by one and tossed into the bay by someone immersed in grief? Or moved by gratitude?

A `WALL OF LAMENT'

Cuban exiles have been drawn to this spot for decades. They stand here, straining to see beyond the horizon to the lost homeland. Some give thanks. Others come in desperation to implore la Caridad to deliver loved ones lost at sea. The shrine is the first place that many come to after they arrive from the island, in fulfillment of their promise to la Virgen when they begged her to let them reach freedom. The seawall, a few steps away, is their second stop. Sometimes, as with Penalva's father, it also becomes their last.

Many exiles want this to be their final resting place, often because they cannot be buried in Cuba and have to settle for the next best thing. Or because their families don't have the money for a Catholic burial, and taking the ashes to the place that represents so much Cuban spirituality and patriotism seems like the most dignified alternative, no matter what the church says.

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