PINK FLAMINGOS

the pink ones, she says, come from africa. that's where they eat the shrimp. and the other flamingos are grey, including -- but not limited to -- the older ones too tired to fly off the continent. the purple swamp hens aren't exactly purple, but you're lucky if you see one at all (let alone three), and you can imagine that they're less close to black when it's less close to dark. still, the thistle is manifestly purple, even at dusk, and the color of the spines of its only blooming flower seems in fact to be more of a light than a shade. and as the shade of night falls it's more and more difficult to tell if the birds in the water are flamingos or storks or egrets, unless you know -- and as she explains -- that the storks and the egrets don't so much like to stand and fish in the saltier of the salt waters. then the flamingo grey is forgotten, because at the moment when it's impossible to tell whether the light in the darkness is the glow of the half moon or the tip of the tail of the sunset, the grey of the salt pools is otherworldly. not grey, but also not exactly pearl or opalescent like you are wont to describe it, and then the light seems to be coming from the shallow pool itself as the breeze keeps up the perpetual motion of the even ripples that never lap up at the edge because they are moved by the breeze simply to feed the flor de sal that grows through the night, even after the clouds have completely obscured the moon.