Osprey Fishing in Rain
Sometimes distant sometimes close enough it sizzles (hot grease in the pan), lighting strikes frying the sea frying the land. Rain driving sideways turns to hail, pellets like shrapnel. They will hurt you.
Into this the Osprey flies.
Hard rain hauls the Fisherbirds toward the sea. Three, now Five, now Six cruise the coastline where the Shelf is a narrow taper. They blur in the pouring down and the gray on gray of their shadows against a roiling coperture of cloud. The storm rings with their cries as they pass each other in challenge and reply, challenge and reply…
To the end of the long jetty The Protector of Fishes strides in his great black coat and oilers. He stands against the weather unafraid, watching. One by one by one he sees the Osprey fail. They fold to the shape of darts and weapon towards the waves. Sometimes they pull up in the nick and sometimes hit square blasting white foam only to climb again into the air, talons empty. Fishes will die. Or they will die. There is no Middle Grounds among these shallows.
Leaning into the wind The Protector of Fishes tugs his woolen watch cap down.
The cap is Navy Blue, and yes, your head gets wet but stays warm. He likes it that way and the cap belonged to his father. He can almost see him there, back at Quonset Point in ’41, running toward a burning B17. This, and the cannonade of thunder he feels in his chest remind him of his uncle too, flying close attack, the German 88 that went clean through the top turret and out the canopy again without exploding. He lost the sight of one eye, hardly a scratch of harm for all that blood and madness, the devolution of men throwing stones.
And like a stone the Osprey dives.
Rain white as tracers creases Osprey’s feathers but this time by blind luck or faculty he finds his mark, plunging. Caught in the crossfire of wind and water Osprey reaches, and cannot, and rises, and falls back, and only on the third and final try finds his wings. And he has what he came for. And he will race now for home. Circling wide between breakwater and land he shirrs the stinging salt from eyes and shoulders. Slung by the Osprey’s blooded talons a Yellowjack rides towards the horror that awaits, alive, and immobile as Fate…
Night. The Protector of Fishes sits on the edge of his narrow berth and contemplates the boats he has known and the days spent there. He cannot remember the count and so cannot decide if they were too many or not enough. They were long days. That is all he knows. Countless the fishes dead by his hand and the winch he ran: Eight Bells, toes curled against the cold he feels the wheelhouse rove in a following sea; Eyes closed, even in deep sleep he sees the fishes gasping and flapping in the bluedark of the ice hold when they should have been long dead. He closes the Book and speaks: “To say the Compassion of the Lord is Infinite is to say the Suffering of the World is without limit and did God make the one and not the other?”
The day is coming when The Protector of Fishes will eat no flesh and content himself with loaves and memories. After a point, all killing is the same.
© 2008 Mark Seth Lender
All Rights Reserved
