Waking at Fish Hoek

By morning,

both the cormorant and the house

are blind.

A grain of sleep in each eye,

I stroke the dead bird,

its feathers black as oil.

Its death

and the decorators

interrupt our holiday

on the Peninsula’s sheltered side;

as we take it back to the sea,

our lungs carry

paint fumes and salt spray;

the brown paper

taped to the glass

crackles in the Cape wind

and the brushes make sure flicks –

like the sound of a bird

as it shakes the spume from its wings.

(First published in "Open Earth II" anthology, Pudding Magazine, April 2017.)