Ink and Wash Painting With Cormorants
Yangshuo’s mountains protrude
into starless dark
tenebrous tongues
lick the lake
raindrops printing wrinkles
on its leaden skin.
A silhouette poles a bamboo boat
dipping a brush in ink.
Beside the fisherman
seven cormorants in a line
corded necks bent like hoses
wings in dry-brush black
stretched wide
chalky backs
speckled with charcoal.
Pen-nib heads glide
slip into ebony silk
streak apart like water
on a speeding windscreen.
Moments later
each bird surfaces
in a shower of grey pearls
silver fish aslant its beak
eyes glinting like jet
before shadowing down once more.
The old man’s pole collects them
time and again
he grasps each sheened throat
to shimmer its catch into his basket.
At some unseen signal
fishers return to their perch
shake drowned feathers
over the lake mirror
utter harsh cries at the night
until they are fed.
Margaret Eddershaw, Nafplion, Greece
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