Pelicans at a Fish-Gutting

See the film here:

 

www.youtube.com/watch?v=tngKSUJumaA

 

Pelicans at a Fish-Gutting

 

Back-lit, pelicans’ bill-bags are translucent,

Slither-slick on the insides, wrinkled

Without like scrotum-flesh. Some

Have fish-hook piercings, adorned

With lengths of line, and brass swivels;

A lead sinker donks against one’s belly.

 

Another seems to burp, and voids

A smelly slurp of fish-white excrement.

 

One chokes on a fish-bone – an occupational

Hazard – and the fish-gobbler is snapped

About the mazzard with leather forceps,

Battered about the eyeballs. Each rejected fish

Sends their necks cazalying skywards,

And the gaggle descends on the remnant,

The great bills tweezering it away from yawling gulls

With ridiculous precision. Each swelling yawn

Poises itself with a resonant grunting,

And the unkempt wings tremble with

Anticipation. Fish guts fly through air,

And two pelicans string them out in a noisome,

Bloody tug of war, their bulged eyes ogling.

 

But once it is gulleted, they are all etiquette:

They shuffle themselves, prod the smallest

To the front, and gaze, as if on an altar,

Form an orderly, worshipful, expectant

Queue.

 

Poem by Giles Watson, 2011. 'Up There Cazaly' is a song about an Australian Rules Footballer (famed for his skill at leaping high in the air to catch the ball) with which nobody of Australian upbringing can escape acquaintance.

 

Done