Matthew Henry John Bartlett

This week I’ve seen fish in the harbour which is really nice because I haven’t seen fish in the harbour since last summer, when you could always look down from behind Freyberg Pool or next to Chaffers Marina and see fish playing and eating each other amongst the seaweed on the sea wall. No fish since summer except for the one day I saw a seal in Oriental Bay playing with his food, a fish, like a cat with a mouse. I have seen and with my brother Richard have seen thousands of tiny fish with silver undersides moving in swirling moiré patterns revealing and hiding the silver glinting when the sun came out, with a woman in a kayak above, or larger fish below. The kahawai scared them away, the little fish, and they tell each other one at a time to get out of here, and that turns the silver swirling into pandemonium, mad flight disturbing the surface and when the bubbles had cleared one little fish left behind all alone. All alone except for the kahawai below who shoots up and swallows the straggler. And I wonder where they slept all these months.