Speciman

There are many wondrous fish that flash their green and yellow sides below Seal Rock, fish with luminescent eyes, with fern-like fins and fins with spines, fish with nostrils close together, bulbous eyes and cordate teeth, fish that are seen only by lantern and others that are never seen, only the soft circle splashes of their air-gulping, creatures with foot-less legs, streamer legs, bundles of arms and feelers, shovel forms in shining sheaths, sword forms and living things that drift like water-swollen leaves. And when the tide draws back, leaving cluttered rock alive with moving pods and shells and hulks, anemones and armored chitons grouping in the cracks, snails and pink transparent bubbles of creatures, it shows a lower shelf of clams and pectins and mussels, limpet cones and giant abalone shells, isopods and lobster claws. But all across this seething sea-jungle of kelp and rock, flushing and receding wave, cracks and caves and tide-pools, shreds of fog and germinating sunlight, there is no stranger thing than one old man who floats his long brown body on a paddle board and face down sculls diagonally across the waves with hands enclosed in bright green wide-webbed gloves.