The Bermudian, May 1989
Winter is past, spring is flying past and so I want more than just to walk along the shore breathing the salty air, watching the blowing spume. Now, as the sea settles to a smooth gloss of blue glass and the reefs thrust their coral heads out to glisten bejewelled to the sun, I want to enjoy all of it… so down to the beach I go, to have my first swim of the year.
The tide is low… where the shoal stretches out from beach to reef some large, blue parrot fish are feeding. If I am calm and swim slowly, I may get very close to them. Today there are at least a dozen of these giant beauties and as they eat, their bodies at forty-five degree angles to the shoals, their tails sometimes breaking the surface of the sea, I can hear the crackling sound of coal in their mouths… it is a sound I love. Recovering from that first shock of entering the coolness, I let myself drift with the fish across the shoal. It is exciting to be in the sea again after the long months of watching it from the shore, for everything seems new… and in many ways it is, because the tides and winter storms have changed the sandy seabeds. There is also a bounty of plant life responding in its own way to the renewed strength of the sun, sending forth minute arms of green, purple, pink and white to the silver line above. The rebirth of life is endless…
