ABOUT FISH

   Something is going on with me about fish.

   When I see them, still trying to breathe,
   left by fishermen on Siesta Bridge
     (once I watched one being filleted,
              still heaving with sides no longer there)--

   I feel almost unbearable pity and horror,
      although I could not touch a fish to save it.

      Now is it too late for you to live?
                Is it too late now for you to live?
                        Is it too late for you to live now?
   --At what precise point is it really too late?

   When I come upon the ad in a newspaper--
   a big fish doubled up in something like a brandy snifter--
   I close the page fast, and do not let it touch me.

   I hate menus that say "battered" fish.
   I hate clothes, dishes, jewelry with images of fish.
           
   A poem I read about the teacup of an eye
        staring out of a net still haunts and revolts me.
   (Don't get the idea that I am that fish. I'm not.)

   I like the smell of the Gulf.
   I myself smell like a fish.

   I remember being carried by my father down to our boat,
   and waking, hours later, in the cabin, rocking in the Gulf,

   --And then the rhythmic thumps of a fish, a tarpon
           my father had just caught, being swung hard,
           Bang, Bang, Bang against the side of the boat
                                              (To stun it? Kill it?)

   I lay in confusions of filtered light,
   happy to be near my father, hoping the fish was a big one,
     flashing silver flames in the dawn, scales flying.                                       

   I think that the thousands of fish my father killed
              are beginning to take their revenge on me.

   I don't think I will eat fish again.

   I want what is deep and alien to remain deep and alien.
            To be left alone.