Evangelyne & Other Poems - Curious About Cormorants

Curious About Cormorants

Tempted by the sea's lull to snorkel,
I find their passage curious,
the way these great divers descend
to steal the frugal tips of waves.
Our group jack-knifes from the hem of reef,
paddles out. And something else sinks forward,
a lone cormorant, roused from her fluid stare,
follows the scuttle of sediment from swimmers' legs.
Flippers sink into the eye of the blue,
identical hunters at best, careful over rock
and pool; probing for abalone, shrimp and crayfish.
On channel marker, the cormorant spreads her gown.
Such a wingspan: the sea describing her as meditator,
crouching tiger, the Jing in the I-Ching,
cyclic Tui of the joyous lake.
And infused into her shape, where no oil begins,
is the rich glaze on black feathers,
dark as a rain-soaked night.
Even more curious is that final glide to rock;
a composure of wings drying out like laundry,
and a conviction, it seems, to be that still beauty at sea,
silent as effigy.