blink

I've never looked a whale right in the eye. Really made eye contact, really bored into its soul.

I've never had enough time to see into that immense, glassy eye like a bowling ball. Really, they've never given me the time. Really, it's not their fault. I'm going my way and they're going theirs.

But I've heard staring into a whale's eye is a thrilling experience, an emotive moment. There's a connection. Communication. I've heard.

It's not like vapid adoration in the eyes of a labrador or the blank, winking stare of an iguana or the calculating, mischievous crescents of a calico cat that we're used to. Not like that at all. So they say.

That eye pierces. It's life changing, I've heard.

A behemoth mammal. Plodding along yet close enough to offer a salutation. Close enough to spot pallid barnacles like freckles across a flat nose. Close enough to see natural black rivets in the leathery hull ofa living submarine.

A dinosaur of a beast yet elegant. So large that each movement lasts for ages. A slick humpback breaking the surface followed by its boomerang tail gradually disappearing before diving deep.

The chance to glimpse that pupil is fleeting, passing. Just like the pod across my bow.

But for the chance to peer into that sphere, to share a connection, to watch synapses spark. Let that eye bore into mine. It's captivating, or so I've heard.

It captivates my thoughts.

karluk

goodnight

good morning

( between ) two worlds

Like snowflakes, no two are alike. And like the artificial sleet in a snow globe, they drift idly in suspended space, quivering inside a living gelatin.

This flood of velum-thin salmon scraps is flushed from the dock back out to sea. One species waste is another's feast.

Thousands of gray specks bob on a swelling emerald and cobalt landscape below an evergreen mountain and cyan sky.

But my eye is drawn to the flutters, swoops, and dives of aggressive, thieving gulls. Black-faced with sharp ebony beaks, white-faced with golden beaks, white-faced with black beaks, or soot-speckled seabirds.

A little skimmer must battle the flocks for a nip of milky, floating flesh. Buoying on an air current he selects a target. He bombs nimbly and with a flash of flaps he dips his bill to emerge dangling a stringy treasure. He swallows in two rapid, choking gulps while fending off vicious competitors out to steal his prize. Bigger and stronger rivals attempt to stay a flight slapping their coral-red feet along the surface while those thoroughly beaten simply alight onto the sea.

Gulls that have gotten their fill lay alongside the frothy path that leads out of the bay with the tide. The crowd chatters and giggles like lunatics in an asylum. Cawing and crying as wings audibly cut the crisp yet faintly slimy air.

And on the other side of this transparency feed cannibalistic pink salmon, slithering amongst the powder in the snow globe occasionally breaking the plane between air and aqua with spontaneous, surging hops.

But a lone, fallen, ash-tipped feather swirls, dances amid the debris, peaceful between two frenetic, carnivorous, swarming worlds.

summertime

king