in which the fish is shown a nasty truth and clothes the watery creatures

The noise stops: the whirling column connecting sky and sea closes. Light fills the air.

I did this not: it is not my doing.
Says the sea in a whisper, and  startled I am for a minute. But then I see what it is I am to know.

 One albatross, wrapped tightly in metres of fishing line, wings bound , head tangled all sides. Quite drowned. Dead, the feathers such a weight when sodden, wet. Those big webbed seabird feet stilled by the meanness of the line scribbled around them.



Nearby is the other of the pair, who must have watched in silence on the surface of the wildly rocking sea, watching the tangled become stiller and stilled.

Why do you not come? It says. Why do you not swoop for kingfish? I am hungry.



But they don’t part. It waits, until at last all breath leaves it also.


They are entangled together as surely as if that cruel line binds and stills that pair of wings, death does not part them. They are together forever.
The sea lays them there, on the smooth sweep of silver sand.

This time, I don’t place them back into the sea, for tiny creatures to tranform into sea-muck. I leave them there for all to witness, see what we have done.

Not my doing: all yours says the sea.
Love and death here tangled, I did this not.


A trace of polar ice surrounding them like an aura as they lie still and silent on the sand.


I return to the end of the beach. In one deft and fliud movement, the sea steals all my clothes. Lightning fast, it reaches up a transparent finger and claws my clothing, my keys, my towel, and sucks it all away.

The keys, I am relieved, anchor themselves into the wet sand. I wade into the water and cast about with my hands.
Give me back my things.

Only a black bra comes bobbing in like the carapace of some strange sea mammal which, I suppose, it is.

You can have this, I want it not, said the sea to me. I pluck it wet and dripping, and acknowledge my defeat. I should know better.


So I consider my message, I think about souls departing. The horizon is vast, but always there.

Some things conjoined forever, entangled with invisible webs.


And under the sea, I know this to be true: fish are dancing,
Fish are dancing with wild abandon, in my stolen clothes.