Poser

It’s been a wild windy day, with clear blue views everywhere. Bean and I met up with a friend in Kakanui then had a walk around the point.

The photogenic dog posed for about 60 seconds while I snapped, then she bounded off to stick her nose down another a rabbit-hole.

Beyond Bean is Campbells Bay, Duthies Bluff and Moeraki.

When I lived in Kakanui there was an occasion when hundreds of dolphins herded shoals of fish (accompanied by swirls of birds overhead) into the southern end of Campbells Bay. I wrote this pome about it.



Dolphins in the Bay

When small dark fins break the surface of the bay-bound waves
A fortunate onlooker on the beach raises a smiling shout.

Picnics are interrupted as
More eyes turn seawards,
To witness the mystery of hummocking dolphin dorsals
Straddling the plane between sealife and airlife.

Tens. Hundreds of dark shapes
Speed up. Circle. Leap and plunge,
Cutting the blue.

Chasing. Herding a melee of seaspray ahead of them:
Fish headed into the shallows
To be cornered and caught.

A circling spiral of rising and plummeting birds signals the slaughter beneath,
Picking up easy scraps of bloody piscine flesh and skin.

The shorebound human audience continues to smile and chat.
In awe. Admiration. Excitement.
Pointing, exclaiming and photographing,
Apparently oblivious
To the raw carnage beneath;
The hidden spectacle
Of the feast,
Of cetacean-orchestrated bloody mayhem.

Out of sight, out of mind.

Then as suddenly as it began the coordinated leaping stops.
The whitewash of panicked fish stills.
The sea surface/ceiling calms.

Dolphins depart.
Filled.

Live fish regroup, re-shoal,
Ready to move on when the water is safe
(When the coast is clear).
Fish bits drift down to settle on the seafloor, and feed others.

Birds fly back up the coast. Languid. Replete.

People sigh, turn and settle back to building sandcastles,
And eating fish and chips.