Sunday morning Leighton Beach
and I’ve managed to find a spot to myself
albeit only for a while.
Soon swimmers come close
or cut across,
either further out
or right where I stand.

I go under
and open my eyes.
It’s different than the night before
when, facing west
at sunset,
through the water I
saw light.

Now it’s more limestone cloudy.

I stay a while longer
as the swimmers continue on.
And then, from the south, also in a line,
approaches midi the pied cormorant.
He seems to have no intention
of passing around or over or under me.
He just keeps on paddling.
We lock eyes.
The water carries him slightly inland of me,
but close enough to touch
as he moves by,
all black and white,
blue eye area,
yellow and pink face,
top beak-end hooked over the bottom.

He keeps his eye on me for a couple more metres
then puts his head under to look for fish.

Gradually he is gone.

Many things exist and approach
in the watery substance
of the world.
What do we see there?
What of what we see
should we seek to become?

***

People talk of light in the dark.
Maybe we should begin to speak
of light 
in the water—
of a watery kind of Sun.