Sunday, May 15, 2011

"THE LONELY PIPEFISH"



Up, up, slender   
         As an eel’s
         Child, weaving   
Through water, our lonely   
Pipefish seeks out his dinner,

         Scanty at best; he blinks
         Cut-diamond eyes—snap—he   
         Grabs morsels so small
Only a lens pinpoints them,
But he ranges all over

         That plastic preserve—dorsal   
         Fin tremulous—snap—and   
         Another çedilla
Of brine shrimp’s gone ...
We talk on of poetry, of love,

         Of grammar; he looks   
         At a living comma—   
         Snap—sizzling about
In his two-gallon Caribbean
And grazes on umlauts for breakfast.

         His pug nosed, yellow
         Mate, aproned in gloom,   
         Fed rarely, slumped,
Went deadwhite, as we argued on;   
That rudder fin, round as a

         Pizza cutter, at the
         End of his two inch
         Fluent stick self, lets his eyes
Pilot his mouth—snap ...
Does his kind remember? Can our kind forget?

(Photo from here.)

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