BEACH QUARANTINE 5
The two blue herons stake out their customary spots in the time it takes me to enter the beach and discard my shoes. They are waiting for fish, always fish. A heron’s body juxtaposes piercingly sharp angles on curves so undulating that they are a study in movement even while standing still. A fisherman tosses a small silver fish to the waiting bird who pierces it mercilessly with the precision of a hungry creature respecting the life force he must transfer. What a lazy bird, my husband says, but I can’t believe it. Lazy is for humans – these creatures are opportunists. Mother Nature grants no mercy to a bird who can’t figure out how to source his daily fish. She is neither spacious nor gracious enough.
Man, however, what a lazy creature, having outsourced his daily fish to a ghastly chains of machines that, in their merciless overproduction, draw the noose ever tighter around the heron’s neck: his waters, his fish, his trees, his choice whether to hop to the fisherman’s pocket or dive into the great purse of Mother Nature’s sea. The wealth from that purse which is so endless, so perpetual, that man is determined to spend it all on himself.
No bird is lazy – only man can fly himself straight into the sun.
