#9 Cormorant on Kearney Beach by Emma McKervey

Cormorant on Kearney Beach

The cormorant flew right through you.

It pierced your breast and came bursting out the other side

without a single of its oil-less feathers being lost.

The sound of the spinal cord could be heard

twanging with the energy of that bird’s flight,

the dark arrow of its beak, head, neck was urgent -

the need for slipstream to ease the journey

of pot belly and blunt wings was enough

to force a pathway through human thorax.

You could not see it from where you stood

admiring the breakers and the mist.

But I saw it, the instant of its passage,

black against the foam, the haze, your heart.