Tern, Tern, Tern…
Tern hovers, then tumbles from the sky. “X” marks the spot where she enters, a cross made of the splash of her spray and the splice of her wings. Beneath lies Sunken Treasure. She alone knows where to Seek and what to Find.
Tern rises from the dark surface, her body shaped now like a “V” and mirrored in the V-shaped wake of water that strays behind her. “V” for Victory. Though of all the boot’ and bounty of the sea, only a single silver minnow flashes in her bright orange beak.
Tern does not spend her meager winnings but holds, as if to savor. West of here is an island where in spring a great metropolis arises: Least Tern and Common Tern, and their nests of stones, and the twinned eggs inside them. Chatter and call echo from the ramparts of this temporary redoubt, out onto the endless moat of the sea like cries of Vikingar and Varinger returned with plunder. But those days are over now. The city abandoned as quickly as it came, gone till another year. There is nothing for her there.
Quo Vada?
Passing her former quarters as if she were a stranger, tern tacks toward land. Others of her kind hail and sometimes join her. Routing up and down the beaches just offshore sometimes they rest on a buoy or piling , a transient place of mooring. Elaborate conversations ensue, terns talking. Some are words of greeting. Some are angry warnings to gull or cormorant who’ve come too close. It is a warning heeded: Though all of these are many times larger none dares approach these pirated roosts which terns have chosen.
Tern, if she is tempted by the society of her confreres, does not show it. She talks to no one. Her destination guarded. Her council recorded only to herself until she hears among all others the one voice that is her polar guide. On shore, upon a waste of pebbles and shells, one waits, lonely. It is her daughter, fledged but dependent on her. The features of the childbird are softer. Her plumage indistinct as if to hide her. In plain sight only her mother finds her and feeds her with a kiss, bill to beak. Then leaves, to seek what other valuables lie out on the shoals of the deeps.
And her daughter cries as if she will never see her mother again. As if she knows. Alas, the day is coming. When fledgling learns to fend for herself or perish. Then Child Tern’s worst fear comes true, that only in this time in this place does Double V become Double You.
