A new morph of the Black Beam, the Black Cable has now appeared. After a talk about changing abalone-urchin-kelp-otter balances in the bay, I overheard an old man mention thirty years or more of running transects along a black cable off the point of the old Chinese fishing village. He was wearing a t-shirt depicting the tree of life and at the base of the tree was him. He had just turned 90 and said it was a birthday present. Someone else piped in and said maybe data from the cable went back further, the military put that cable in who knows how long ago.

The cable was rapidly growing out of my mind and running through every channel in my body so that it emerged through each hair, standing them up on end. Just beyond the waving window pane, beyond the goose on her oiled egg that will never hatch, off the ledge held back from the bay by the engorged net of ice plants, a black umbilical cord running out from a navel unknown.

I first saw it exploring at low tide, bundled cords emerging from the crushed shells, anchored to the rock and cut through. A few feet away the cable continued, the connecting section cleanly removed, or disappeared, or become invisible.