marine pool

I dig through the marine pool with a pair of old goggles and a snorkel reaching out to the fish swimming by trying to touch them. Some hide on rocks with their bodies in a u-shape but swim away when my hand gets too close. I see a mauve sea cucumber, that’s what the info board above the pool said it was, with its fronds out hoping to catch a meal and I stroke it gently hoping not to force it to eject its insides in defence but it pulls its fronds in and I leave it alone feeling amazed to have found it attached to this rock.

We wait for the octopuses to rise up and out of the oceans to return to their homes and on their way remind us that octopi is an accepted but incorrect plural form of something important we have realised and it’s scratching at the back of our minds but we haven’t yet considered it seriously and I wonder what that will say.

A wasp carries a spider across the road and we undo our seatbelts to step outside and examine more closely.
Two klipspringer stand in the road until a fish eagle appears they scale the rocks.

I want to go back to undo these ordered steps but I can’t go back only forward to unlearn what I believe as truth by accident or was it forced on me even to move left or right is wrong only forward is acceptable the camera photographs its mechanical precision is easy to believe but it lies it uses all its tricks and practiced strategies to present reality but I know it isn’t a human designed this tool but the tool now has its own agenda and it shapes my perception my thoughts my memories I try to imagine something different but I can’t.