Two Lunches and a Puffin
Sitting on an elevated finger of rectangular granite above a cove with Caribbean-colored water, I watched pink jellyfish float below among the kelp. A glint darted between them underwater. At first I assumed it was a fish, but would realize moments later it was a puffin mid-dive for its lunch.
I, too was having lunch, but mine was prepared by a Galician chef living in on the island of Newfoundland in northeastern Canada. He came from thousands of miles across the Atlantic, but today he had woken early to make the hikers at his inn a cheese egg cauliflower cake.
I unwrapped the red and white checkered paper and took a bite; the puffin surfaced. I swallowed; the jellyfish floated. Cobbled rocks rolled down the beach with outgoing waves and they made a song without melody - percussion only. The soft kind of clatter that smoothes edges over years instead of days.
Another bite and a puffin flew overhead. I squinted up delighted because this bird was on the list of things I came to see. It clasped a small, silvery fish in its mouth and moved along out of sight.
We both with our lunches in the cove. Hearing the stones roll. When it flew overhead, there passed only a few feet between us. Me with an understanding of how temporary my perch above the water was; the puffin living that temporariness, likely without knowing.
