Over the weekend I went to Hampton Bays on the Long Island Sound for a workshop. Saturday morning I watched the sun ease into the sky and throw a walkway of orange light across the Sound. It seemed that I could step out on the water and take a stroll. Swans, gulls and cormorants were more practical as they tended to breakfast. I walked the beach looking for the remains of stories. Moon snails, quahogs, slipper shells, razor clams, bay scallops, hermit crabs were all eager to share tales of arrival on the beach. Some were harrowing tales of predator's meals; some were stories of being cast upon the rocks. Now the shells would delight beachcombers like me or return to the beach as sand.
I inched down the tideline, a place rapidly changing and so full of wonders and mysteries. A cormorant waddling along the beach caught my eye. Walking, not diving or flying - strange. Then I saw why - a large fishing sinker swung from its neck. A noose which condemned the bird to land, not to fly or dive. Slow starvation.
Juxtaposed: the beauty of sunrise, the fascination of beach creatures, the torment of a cormorant. Living is life and death, beauty and pain set side by side, telling tales of what being alive could be.