in which the sea speaks of the fish

via oceanic bluetooth

Here it is again. 

That fishwoman creature. 

It was standing there last week staring at me as I was sending a thumptumbling wall of my strength towards the edge. She knows when I may be tempted to crack her bones and she did not come in, just stands there. That is unusual, I had thought she would come in anyway.

 It is rude to stare especially when one cannot control oneself and the wind and all the other things make one mighty angry and then one has a tantrum of sorts you could say, and one expels all ones contents up in a convulsion no I couldn’t help that but still it stared with no expression whatever. Just looked and looked.

I know she is disguising her expressions she thinks I don’t know that. 

What she does not know is I can see inside that weedy head of hers, or perhaps she does know?  I am not bothered: after all I am more concerned about supporting life on the planet and this is merely a small diversion for me the mighty oceanic.

 

I wish the fishcreature would decide what it is. It goes away and then comes back to me. It will come to me endlessly here yet every single time goes back to the edge and out it gets, any creature with half a brain can see that it does not move in a very elegant fashion on the land. Yet look, it can shoot about as smooth as a whiting when it is here with me, only coming up to the surface all the time: should learn to breathe water like any self respecting oceanic creature.

 

 

And this nonsenses it insists on putting upon itself, this stuff neither flesh nor hair nor bone, not weed or scale: I always pluck it off, as best I can , it even pokes things into its earholes I’ll have THAT I said and pulled them out , spat them at the edge pfft just like that.

 It covers its head and eyes: I take them too, I wait until it is dreaming then I curl over and peel them from its head, I let free the weedy head, just like that. It does get angry then, when I take its eye covers, it spits and hisses, and I laugh. Sometimes it pretends not to care at all but I know. I’ll have those, I say and whoosh, I have them and I hide them in the clouds of sand way down.

 

 

When its ears are unblocked then I can get in its head, into its earholes AND LISTEN VERY CLOSELY TO THE NONSENSE.

 

 

But it always comes back to me.

Yesterday it came way way out so I turned on a very fine show of curling waves and it seemed most pleased and inclined to stay. But it asked very politely or me to take it in, so I did, despite myself. I even combed its weedy hair for it and stood it nicely on the edge, she has no cause to complain. Not even when I tried to pull it by the feet backwards, that was only small.

 

A debt: she says I owe her a debt, but I dispute that. Well, I dispute it today. She said, I will give you anything if only. Yes I will admit she has given, but so have I. Could have crushed her many times with the white waves, but I have not. She thinks I have something of hers. 

That may be so, but I did not take it from her, no. She gave it me.

I am just the place where  things end up, where things come to, where she comes to talk in that silent way, we all are together then she, me, the fish and all the small lights that went out early, we are all here and she knows it.

 

 

She tried to hide in the rock pool in the storm and I will admit, I reached in and searched around but she is quick and deep and knows too many of my tricks. Next day I pretended to be  uninterested, for she had brought her calf, the calf swims along fine in the nimbus-shaped space besides the fishwoman, where she is safe they swim in time, they are like the humpbacks moving along, the cub and the half fish moving along like one though the smaller does not cover the head and lets her silver weed hang down, I like that.  Far more respectful than placing a cover of that offensive stuff on one's head. It is the same stuff which tangles me up and makes me ill, it tangles up the seabirds and kills my best creatures, now I have great tracts of the stuff here and there. Next time I won’t just make naked her head but all of her: lets see how she likes that.

 

 

Here she is again, dreaming: it is not light enough for her to be here, the sky is barely orange on the edges but she has come here to me and not skulking in the rockpool. That pleases me mightily.

Today she has given me a stone, and some words, so I will ruffle the sand and make plumes.

 She is dreaming: I can hear her dreams.

Perhaps once she was a whiting? I cannot be sure. She certainly has the same expression as a whiting. Same long face.

 

It is going to the edge, leaving, climbing out and away

one day I will keep it.