For Will Stewart
At first sight it seems as if someone is swimming
too close to the rocks, ignoring the warnings
about the unexpected wash from the ferries
leaving and entering the harbour nearby.
But it is a grey seal’s head that emerges clearly –
then dives, its back almost breaking the surface.
It emerges again further along the rocks,
then dives. Perhaps it is searching the crannies
for crabs and lobsters. It has probably
noticed me, and decided an elderly,
stationary gent, in a panama hat
and cut-offs, well above the rocks poses
no immediate threat to its food stocks
or liberty. Is it presumptuous
to assume grey seals do not reflect
on abstractions – like foolhardiness
and aptitude, freedom and trespass,
and wonder? In northern mythologies
they sometimes shed their skins, become human,
and walk among us. I watch it dive.
Much later, after the sun has set
like a furnace, and Saturn and Jupiter
have risen, an ancient piece of cosmic
debris, older than history, long before
time, flares huge, yellow, briefly. And I think
of the seal being a seal.
By David Selzer