By Jeff Sloan
How we are caught in this life
As the dazzling tuna
Sparkling radiantly in the fisher’s net
The deep blue sheen upon its scales
And lines of shining silver
In beams of the afternoon light
Wild mouth agape and gasping
Pulsing in panic rhythms
As though praying to an unfamiliar god
Screaming blindly without a sound
As the bubbles float up, moreover away
And seconds later at the surface burst
A thrash of the tail
Futility! Futility! Futility!
It swings an arc of liquid motion
Then quiets but to thrash anew.
Staring, a cavernous glare within its eye
As one gazes down a deep, dark well
Sudden memories of minutes past
A time before the frantic now
When all the sea was free to wander
With all the others gathered 'round
A school the size of supreme whale
Swimming past the squids and grouper
The porpoises and the hammerheads
The friends and foes of nature’s unsurpassed
And although some were lost day by day
It seemed better than to end this way
Within the fisher’s nets
A living submarine
Propelled at speeds, forty miles an hour
Now flings its great weight to and fro
Seeking anxiously for freedom
And pulls against the crane that lifts
High above the murky deep
Forever, so it seems to drag
With muscles that will not tire
The inevitability of this frenzied end
Half expected in times of great fear
Does not contrast the teeth of men
Plunging ever deeper into this world
The tuna senses others
Damned as it, and trapped for good
The porpoise and the turtle too,
And so many more of its own breed
Soon the sphere of sun appears
Like a golden dagger to black eyes
A mesmerizing phantom orb
That signals the proximity of death
The nets shake violently at the plane
A commotion of water at the unknown
And soon the air becomes the world
And in its eyes the suns blinding force
White lines and shadows on the horizon
Then tossed with a thud to the boats slimy floor
No match for such mysterious powers
The fish succumbs to its fate
And with no water to flower its gills
It sleeps and awaits its doom
At the point of the fisher’s knife.
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Thanks for reading everyone. Spread some good, help others' and be true to yourself.
Ever yours'
J.S.