Best Fish Poems

we had goldfish and they circled around and around
in the bowl on the table near the heavy drapes
covering the picture window and
my mother, always smiling, wanting us all
...

Translated from the Spanish by Christopher Logue

Drunk as drunk on turpentine
From your open kisses,
...

Slowly, silently, now the moon
Walks the night in her silver shoon;
This way, and that, she peers, and sees
Silver fruit upon silver trees;
...

You've asked me what the lobster is weaving there with
his golden feet?
I reply, the ocean knows this.
You say, what is the ascidia waiting for in its transparent
...

Love is...

Love is feeling cold in the back of vans
...

You're in this dream of cotton plants.
You raise a hoe, swing, and the first weeds
Fall with a sigh. You take another step,
Chop, and the sigh comes again,
...

You fit into me
like a hook into an eye

a fish hook
...

In the summer
I stretch out on the shore
And think of you
Had I told the sea
...

The Pobble who has no toes
Had once as many as we;
When they said "Some day you may lose them all;"
He replied "Fish, fiddle-de-dee!"
...

Wynken, Blynken, and Nod one night
Sailed off in a wooden shoe,--
Sailed on a river of crystal light
Into a sea of dew.
...

English Teeth, English Teeth!
Shining in the sun
A part of British heritage
Aye, each and every one.
...

March days return with their covert light,
and huge fish swim through the sky,
vague earthly vapours progress in secret,
things slip to silence one by one.
...

'There's something new in the river,'
The fish said as it swam.
'It's got no scales, no fins and no gills,
And ignores the impassable dam.'
...

When Ironbark the turtle came to Anthony's lagoon
The hills were hid behind a mist of equinoctal rain,
The ripple of the rivulets was like a cheerful tune
And wild companions waltzed among the grass as tall as grain.
...

Elephants are contagious!
Be careful how you tread.
An Elephant that's been trodden on
Should be confined to bed!
...

Did I not say to you, “Go not there, for I am your friend; in this
mirage of annihilation I am the fountain of life? ”
Even though in anger you depart a hundred thousand years
from me, in the end you will come to me, for I am your goal.
...

The fields are chill, the sparse rain has stopped;
The colours of Spring teem on every side.
With leaping fish the blue pond is full;
With singing thrushes the green boughs droop.
...

For Thomas Edwards Wanning


Think of the storm roaming the sky uneasily
...

I saw you twice the other day
Stirring passion anew
It's easy saying just move on
Less easier to do
...

I wait for the holiday crowd to clear the beach
before stepping onto the first wave.

Soon I am walking across the Atlantic
...

Oh, Marcia,
I want your long blonde beauty
to be taught in high school,
so kids will learn that God
...

The red globe of light, the liquor green,
the pulsing arrows and the running fire
spilt on the stones, go deeper than a stream;
You find this ugly, I find it lovely
...

At ten AM the young housewife
moves about in negligee behind
the wooden walls of her husband’s house.
I pass solitary in my car.
...

[Dedicated to respected poet Sandra Fowler]

Stormy time stirring
Rainy breeze hiking
...

Big Boy came
Carrying a mermaid
On his shoulders
And the mermaid
...

At 1:30 in the morning a fart
smells like a marriage between
an avocado and a fish head.
...

Allie, call the birds in,
The birds from the sky.
Allie calls, Allie sings,
Down they all fly.
...

.
The river deep and dark
~~~flowing through the night
carrying flotsam and jetsam
...

it is hard to remain human on a day
when birds perch weeping
in the trees and the squirrel eyes
do not look away but the dog ones do
...

ALL things can tempt me from this craft of verse:
One time it was a woman's face, or worse --
The seeming needs of my fool-driven land;
...

The river is famous to the fish.
The loud voice is famous to silence,
which knew it would inherit the earth
before anybody said so.
...

Our sardine fishermen work at night in the dark
of the moon; daylight or moonlight
They could not tell where to spread the net,
unable to see the phosphorescence of the
...

Bird perched, Branch fell
Bird thought, “I did”.
Hen cackled, Sun Rose
Hen thought, “I did”.
...

It was hard to believe the flesh was heavy on my back.
The fisherman said: Will you have her, carelessly,
trailing his nets and his nerves, as though his words
sanctified the purpose with which he faced himself.
...

There's a polar bear
In our Frigidaire-
He likes it 'cause it's cold in there.
With his seat in the meat
...

(A prose which was written few months back)
....................................................................................

(for some of my friends whom I lost sadly today) .....
...

Science, that simple saint, cannot be bothered
Figuring what anything is for:
Enough for her devotions that things are
And can be contemplated soon as gathered.
...

...

As the sun showed it's first ray of light
I told everyone it's time to take flight
They asked me whether the adventure would be long
I said it would'nt be if we hum a nice little song
...

Come live with me, and be my love,
And we will some new pleasures prove
Of golden sands, and crystal brooks,
With silken lines, and silver hooks
...

Maybe you'll remember that razor-faced man
who slipped out from the dark like a blade
and - before we realized - knew what was there:
he saw the smoke and concluded fire.
...

This urge, wrestle, resurrection of dry sticks,
Cut stems struggling to put down feet,
What saint strained so much,
Rose on such lopped limbs to a new life?
...

Once red ripple came to land
In the golden sunset burning--
Lapped against a maiden's hand,
By the ford returning.
...

A pound in the slot and out comes the chain,
It's Saturday supermarket shopping again,
And so I've obtained my large wire trolley,
And when shopping, you certainly need loads of lolly!
...

My wedding-ring lies in a basket
as if at the bottom of a well.
Nothing will come to fish it back up
and onto my finger again.
...

What's greater, Pebble or Pond?
What can be known? The Unknown.
My true self runs toward a Hill
More! O More! visible.
...

Memory, hither come,
And tune your merry notes;
And, while upon the wind
Your music floats,
...

My sleeping children are still flying dreams
in their goose-down heads.
The lush of the river singing morning songs
Fish watch their ceilings turn sun-white.
...

The Whale that wanders round the Pole
Is not a table fish.
You cannot bake or boil him whole
Nor serve him in a dish;
...

What fish feel,
birds feel, I don't know--
the year ending.
...

Are you alive?
I touch you.
You quiver like a sea-fish.
I cover you with my net.
...

behold how the River Nile generously flows
and hugs the banks with its gentile waves
it flows and smiles to the sun above
it flows as the blood inside a body
...

Love happened at last,
And we entered God's paradise,
Sliding
Under the skin of the water
...

I said, 'I'll take the T-bone steak.'
A soft voice mooed, 'Oh wow.'
And I looked up and realized
...

O generation of the thoroughly smug
      and thoroughly uncomfortable,
I have seen fishermen picnicking in the sun,
I have seen them with untidy families,
...

Roar of the rushing train fearfully rocking,
Impatient people jammed in line for food,
The rasping noise of cars together knocking,
And worried waiters, some in ugly mood,
...

A man, infirm
With age, slowly sucks
A fish bone.
...

THE WORM AND THE ANGLER
They (the fish) are not as intelligent as we who kill them; although they are more noble and more able.- Earnest Hemingway in 'Old Man and the Sea'.

When you picked me up from the dirt
...

Near the dry river's water-mark we found
Your brother Minnegan,
Flopped like a fish against the muddy ground.
Beany, the kid whose yellow hair turns green,
...

We lie back to back. Curtains
lift and fall,
like the chest of someone sleeping.
Wind moves the leaves of the box elder;
...

Coming and going these several seasons,
Do stay out of the baobab tree,
Follow where you please your kindred spirits
...

World will cease to exist and face extinction,
Not to differentiate and make the distinction,
It all hinges on the word exploitation,
Simple logic and need no explanation.
...

Here, she said, put this on your head.
She handed me a hat.
you 'bout as white as your dad,
and you gone stay like that.
...

You hear the sound of carols from afar.
Bright bulbs and tinsel, cinnamon and cloves.
Beyond a hill of snow you see a star.
...

Who is this fish, still wearing its wealth,
flat on my drainboard, dead asleep,
its suit of mail proof only against the stream?
What is it to live in a stream,
...

The maggots in my meatloaf,
Often cause me too much strife.
They take advantage of me,
And they need to get a life!
...

Cat! who hast pass’d thy grand climacteric,
How many mice and rats hast in thy days
Destroy’d? How many tit bits stolen? Gaze
With those bright languid segments green, and prick
...

This is not my home. How did I get so far from water? It must
be over that way somewhere.
I am the color of wine, of tinta. The inside of my powerful
right claw is saffron-yellow. See, I see it now; I wave it like a
...

Will it last? he says.
Is it a masterpiece?
Will generation after generation
Turn with reverence to the page?
...

That bright chimeric beast
Conceived yet never born,
Save in the poet's breast,
The white-flanked unicorn,
...

In sea-cold Lyonesse,
When the Sabbath eve shafts down
On the roofs, walls, belfries
Of the foundered town,
...

Sling me under the sea.
Pack me down in the salt and wet.
No farmer’s plow shall touch my bones.
No Hamlet hold my jaws and speak
...

CANINE FELINE FRIENDSHIP – PART I

Once our tom-cat brought to our house,
As honoured guest, his feline spouse.
...

Dawn--
fish the cormorants haven't caught
swimming in the shallows.
...

Brother, I've seen some
Astonishing sights:
A lion keeping watch
Over pasturing cows;
...

Listen, my friend, this road is the heart opening,
kissing his feet, resistance broken, tears all night.

If we could reach the Lord through immersion in water,
...

WEARY already, weary miles to-night
I walked for bed: and so, to get some ease,
I dogged the flying moon with similes.
...

when you go to fish
go fishing for the finest kind
which good anglers always do.
...

Fish (fly-replete, in depth of June,
Dawdling away their wat'ry noon)
Ponder deep wisdom, dark or clear,
...

There is a bird in the poplars!
It is the sun!
The leaves are little yellow fish
swimming in the river.
...

First Girl
When this yokel comes maundering,
Whetting his hacker,
I shall run before him,
...

The waters deep, the waters dark,
Reflect the seekers, hide the sought,
Whether in water or in air to drown.
Between them curls the silver spark,
...

When in the halcyon days of old, I was a little tyke,
I used to fish in pickerel ponds for minnows and the like;
And oh, the bitter sadness with which my soul was fraught
When I rambled home at nightfall with the puny string I'd caught!
...

As I awoke this morning, I fell into the sky

The ocean left right after me and gracefully rolled by
...

Wynken, Blynken, and Nod one night
Sailed off in a wooden shoe,--
Sailed on a river of misty light
Into a sea of dew.
...

Fishes serene
Comfortable.....swim
Free these creatures
Swimming wild?
...

About the Shark, phlegmatical one,
Pale sot of the Maldive sea,
The sleek little pilot-fish, azure and slim,
How alert in attendance be.
...

All right. Try this,
Then. Every body
I know and care for,
And every body
...

So said the smart talk back in 1916.
For an out-of-work lawyer pickings were lean.
...

O You Educators! ! !
Teach not a flyingbird to swim

Ask not a bird to burrow
...

Man moves with the wind assisting his respiration
hope moves man in finding his way and direction;
love keeps forgetting its existence and action
truth keeps circling the heart for its perception;
...

The rain came.
Eagerly all were waiting for it.
But a torrential fall
Over a few days
...

...

Fishermen at Ballyshannon
Netted an infant last night
Along with the salmon.
An illegitimate spawning,
...

BEAUTIFUL Soup, so rich and green,
Waiting in a hot tureen!
...

I know a Jew fish crier down on Maxwell Street with a voice like a north wind blowing over corn stubble in January.
...

When you do things from your soul, you feel a river
moving in you, a joy.
...

To the Williamson Brothers


High noon. White sun flashes on the Michigan Avenue
...

Children innocently ask:
Where do the animals' souls go when they are dead?
Does the fish-soul leave the ocean?
And do the birds
...

A SUDDEN TURN (original version)

a fish darts forward
...