sentinels

...and stillness is there in the powder blue sky. Cormorants perch sentinel against the wasteland around, yet I pass through unmolested to the river.
It is collecting its currents in a slow swirl and stirring the clouds overhead. A cormorant dismounts and flies away then turns and puts itself in the water before me. It paddles into where the sun is sparking alight ripples in magnesium combustion, brilliant flare after flare dances and dies to flare again . The bird is silhouetted dark against the wildfire flames of light burning the river. Then it dives in a perfect curve.
I watch trying to predict where it will rise. Moments pass and where it submerged has healed. Another moment, then another and I am looking east and west up and down the river sure my eye will meet its re-emergence into the air.
I miss it and turn to see it fighting an eel that it is trying to thrash down its gullet. The eel is working its way back out of the cormorant's mouth and I realise I am trying to swallow for the bird. It is drifting towards the dazzling light and lifts its head straight back to the sky and deep throats the eel in three gagging gulps.
 I'm not trying to mock swallow any more and am instead looking at the cormorant's neck kinked with the eel. It moves as the eel moves in there. Then a sudden paddle flap along the water and along the water and then it takes the air. Its neck is still eel-stricken. It flies back to its sentinel post.
I watch it for a while, but it seems at ease slowly digesting the eel. All this while the light has been there dancing on the river, the water a-swirl in slow tides from the far sea, the ocean. The bird wide wings on its post in acclamation, I think. Not the natural posture to dry its wings, but to acclaim this triumph of happenstance. I raise my arms in recognition then pass on my way.