The Clutch John D. Kelly

The Clutch

Low accessible all in one basket vulnerable in a scrape above sea-level at high tide; exposed on shingle amongst sea kale in a nest of dried wrack and kelp lined with fine down from her own breast.

A speck of blood. Her heart is beating fast. A North Atlantic Eider: a mother brooding not for moving, slowly starving after more than three weeks on top of her little low heavens; the faintest of tappings within her precious half-dozen beginning to stir her world, tap into mine as she nestles listens watches waits.

Does she pray to not be seen as she sits alone? Her ostentatious mate is long gone to moult offshore in a raft of useless drakes all at sea. Her clutch won't change gear to hatch until each of her six is ready for that special day when they'll all shed their smooth cool shellsuits together, see eye to eye, be bill to bill for the first time in a new outside dispensation after the pipping of egg teeth is done in synchronization after they've all muscled out exhausted; after each has grown into its new yolk-slicked downy skin.

She has made the warmest of nests in the lightest of feathers. To me it is like a pillow for a dreamer.

I nearly flattered her flattened her by treading on her (and them) with my big leather boots, so expertly was she camouflaged when we happened upon her on that wild rocky shore at Doon Point.

John D. Kelly

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