Must a Violence

Five Tiny Doves

41 Five Tiny Doves It was clear she had carefully considered which jagged rock from the pile of rocks provided for the purpose. Her pitching arm was winding up. I glanced aside and saw a school of silvery fish bank left and right around some monolithic coral growth, around a sunken hull of ship. The silver parted and merged again like balls of mercury. The hull was overgrown with waving plants and strands of ramifying green. She lashed the whipcord for more optimal momentum. I turned my drooping eye and caught a glimpse of a sea horse disappearing into dark. The ridges of its body glistened with mysterious gems, then another sea horse 42 propelled into view using its extravagant dragon-tail. It beckoned me to follow. How can sunlight make it down so deep, I thought. I was concentrating hard. In the periphery, I saw the shovel blade bear down as if upon another’s head, hitting another person. Far up, away, bared teeth with a distant blue sky behind— I myself heard from the bottom of the sea the folding of an ocean wave upon its surface, the muted cry of wheeling seagulls up above, scavenging and rowdy, somewhere far out above the blue expanse, breathing air, occasionally dipping in. But sound in water— Water, the conduit of sound! From my ear’s positioning far below the choppy surface, from my auditory nerves, I heard 43 inside a saturated seashell’s whorl, I heard the flank of a fish creak to change its angle, heard acceleration as it sped away, the pointillistic gleam of fluctuating scales. I heard the effort of a sea slug, a squeaking on the coral. I heard a crab dance by on pointed feet beneath an old crab line where at the floating end, I heard fraying of the fibers— Loosen— Slacken into dark. The lightless bottom, where no distilled ray will ever penetrate. Oh, the sound inside the pitch! Nearby, on the darkened ocean floor, I heard a living sand dollar drag its mass across the thickening granules. I heard its velvet spines, its follicles unfurl, extend and grasp, its cilia grip individual grains of sand, the rough-cut edges of the grains, and heave its cumbrous body forward, overtaking 44 discarded skeletons and shells along the way. A living sand dollar on its path across the sediment! Five tiny doves live inside that sand dollar— How much more can I ignore? I listened for the doves— ...