Prize Trout

      The fish swizzle
      from sunspot to sunspot
      and wound to wound
      in the habit of compassion.
5     The smaller one takes
      the untidy rags
      of ephemeral flesh
      from the larger one's goitered middle
      and vanishes.
10    Children look down
      with their tangle of snags....
      Obstruction helps us
      by keeping our desire real.
      The old fish
15    Leontes and me
      abandoned by love
      and inspired by hatred,
      the small fish consuming the great.
      Obliquely beneath the tangle
20    is there still
      a waver in the water?
      The big fish,
      trailing his pennants of flesh,
      brave, failed, bleeds a somber puff
25    of tired blood into the pool.
      It stumbled in the water,
      the old you
      still regal and true....
      dragging a discolored fin
30    through the increasing clouds;

 

From the collection "Red Bank"

Written by Gregg Glory [Gregg G. Brown]

More information available on gregglory.com.