The Fish

Quadrant, March, 2007 by Lisa Williams

THE FISH

   How they appear: tunneled vision
   in a brackish world. But they weave through it,
   ambient, loose as the drops that brush their skin,
   slick colony of mists. Or do not weave.

   These snaking vines, these luminous passersby
   who quiver and blink in strange upstagings
   don't form obstructions to a path, but mark details
   in an intimate landscape, one that, though vast,
   in practice is always narrowed ...

   Minutiae abound, things small as the tip
   of an eyelash, which the fish might gulp,
   for inside lies the way to another world
   of blood, fanned bones, cold pearly spears
   around which scales furl armor. Slits
   for breath, sleek passageways, flutter life
   in beats, the rhythm of their keeping.

   Where they exist: this pulse they are hinged on,
   this harsh gill music. In colorless fog,
   or where a billion hues confound,
   they can settle on the island of that
   breathing, hold fast to the stone of it
   as the great mouth chums, each wave
   one ring of truth the sea itself extends.