Chained

Chained

I do not have the jetty to myself. I am not alone. I am watching things eat other things which are surely eating yet more things. Waves slide up the rocks translucent green and collide with higher rocks, turn white. Each set is a revolution. Anticipation, violence, silence, repetition. A cormorant dives through the bopping ceiling and the sky stops breathing. The cormorant reappears with a fish flapping in its beak. It holds the fish by the middle, crosswise. The fish is flapping. The bird shakes its prey. A quick twist of its head, it releases its grip on the fish and spins it, catches it again by the head. The cormorant pauses with the tail sticking from its mouth. I wait. It swallows. Its white throat swells and the fish is gone. Forever. The fish is not gone, never. I can imagine it, whole, in the gut, gills still trying and eyes burning in night as the universe shakes again...