71. fished, looking back into the river
cold eyes along the length of my skin, i turn greyish-green for your morning gaze, here are my intestines, i'm giving you them, how you have slowly reeled me in, the power in your large scaly hands & expert flick of your wrist as it cracks, yet it could all come so easily pounding down, through my ribs like a sledge hammer, you are like those suburban children, who are taught to bash fish to death, on the weekends, at those recreational fish farms in southern victoria, even smaller fish, had the filthy dirty hands of the public on them, in the panicked crazy water of the tourist petting tanks, i'm trying to survive in the best way i can, with my worn-out old filter still bubbling its fear, i look out of your bedroom window into the river, my pulse has not slowed down as yet, your shore has not created a calm in me, i have not adjusted to its lack of current, all those long days of your absence, i basked silently in shallows of sunlight, & there was someone else, a murray cod named mulloka, held captive in a viewing tank for nine years, at the snob's creek hatchery & information centre, a dismal fish without a river, his cold & solitary world |
