Poems by Geralyn Pinto
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Cormorant Fishing
by Geralyn Pinto
From Canary Spring 2024
Geralyn lives in Mangalore between the sub-tropical splendor of the Western Ghats of peninsular India and the great expanse of the Arabian Sea to the east.
Shapes shift in a stippled dawn.
Behind a muslin mist
silhouette of man, bird and raft
might just be wood adrift,
floating shoal of silica,
or black teeth of river rock.
Man and bird watch
for what the water may hold
and fire may free.
A lantern is lowered,
flame ignites blue-bleakness,
gashes it into gold.
Dazed by submarine glory
a fish rises, eye fixed
on come-and-go crimson.
It meets an open beak.
But this ‘Jonah’ will not rest
in the belly of the bird.
Day arrives on a curl of pink.
Spoils are shared:
big fish ceded to the man,
commander of the wealth
of land and river;
The bird makes do with small meal,
the wages of collaboration.
Note: Cormorant fishing is a traditional technique in which trained cormorants are employed to catch fish in rivers and inlets. This method is usually employed through spring and summer; the cormorant fishing season concluding in mid-autumn. The bird is fitted with a ring around its neck which forms a constriction and thereby serves as a throat snare. It is thus prevented from swallowing the fish which is then extracted from the bird’s beak. Once the day’s work is done, the catch is sorted out. The men keep the big fish for themselves and give the small ones to the bird as its earnings, so to speak. Cormorants are known, however, to resent being short-changed and refuse to co-operate if not rewarded adequately. This style of fishing was once widely practiced in Vietnam, China and Japan, but is now more of a tourist attraction. The last stanza points to the exploitation of the species by men.
© Geralyn Pinto
Flamingos
by Geralyn Pinto
Flamingos,
a parade of them,
perfectly angled
where foot and ankle meet.
Still and intent
as origami birds
in a child’s craft book.
Ballerinas ruminating,
first on one leg,
then the other.
In the giddy orange
of an Indian noon,
seducing shrimp
into exact and sinuous gullets.
Then, siphoning dye
from crustacean body
to bird barbules
till they burst
into wildest vermilion,
a riotous burning
from shaft to filament tip.
**
Flamingos
upended in riverbed grunge:
urban feed of waxed cups, film
and bright disposable bags.
Uneasy fowl,
tube-legged, sifting
polymer from polymer.
Perfect plastic,
industrial grey
and green flamingos.
Plump and polystyrene,
they will not fly
south in winter, north in spring.
© Geralyn Pinto