the price of fish


I am a little silver fish
consider my shiny scales well -
they keep out the water
and they keep in the smell...

O.K., so I'm not actually a fish:
but I've eaten a few cans of tuna
in my time.
and apparently you are what you eat
(I haven't quite mastered
that whole breathing water thing yet
but my swimming seems to be improving).

I really only started out that way
so I could say
we can't keep strip mining the ocean,
or there'll be no fish left!

but I don't want to turn the poem
into a pedagogic rant.
what if it detonated an explosion
of panic buying
in the piscatory markets?

And I don't want you,
gentle listener,
to feel like I've clubbed you with an oar
in the bottom of the old poetry reading boat
don't want you to stagger off stunned
into the valley of the shadow of snapper
totter through the tunnel of trevally
or wander dazed
over the desert of ethnic seafood cuisine,
where icthyophagy is your only consolation

so please ignore this request
I am not the Lorax
and I do not speak for the little finny ones

out of sight, out of poem
that's my motto

what's good for Sealord
is good for the orange roughy

so bring on the filet-o-fish
bathe me in tartare sauce

do not ask for whom the squid rings...
it rings for table three.