in which the fish receives a gift but knows better than saying thankyou.

You have to keep an eye on that sea you know. In Autumn, when the saltwater is warm and the skies beautiful, it puts on an act of helplessness, of pretty little wavelets and sandbanks and golden light shining from every place. Surfing a wave over a sandbank, the sea still pulled my by the hair, like a beetroot being dragged by its stalk, and threw me in a hole.
Pfft. I say. Pull my hair as you wish, tis nothing, tis just hair. Have it if you must, I don't care, tis tangled and weedy.




But in the night, the sea surges in an insidious burst, and scrabbles around when noone is looking. Takes the sand away, hunts in the furrows of the rocks. Picking and gouging, laying bare with barely a sigh, so silent and swollen.




I look at this world revealed, and despite myself, I am impressed that so much is laid bare, and me not hearing a thing. All the stolen sand making sandbanks under the surface of the water, here the rocks are pale and naked, their veins blush and glow in the wide world here, woken so rudely.




It will all have to come back, you know, I said quite simply in the dawn air. All that sand, eventually.

Not even the resting seagulls stirred, just the dainty shush shush of wavelets and the sigh of the autumn breath of the sea.



Next morning I was astounded to find that all was back in place, in only one single night, and only half a moon to help with such things,
Everything smoothed, all crevices covered,
and even a gift left there for me.







I made a pretense of thinking it was washed there by chance, complicit in this game I am.
Even though I know,
that the sea gave it to me.
To me.


I look up at the sky and cover my secret smile.