I caught a tremendous fish
.     .     .     .     .     .     .     .
And I let the fish go.
—Elizabeth Bishop

All the people are old people.
Older than me.
Granddad took me fishing
with one of his friends.
They said we’d catch flounder.

They killed the engine
near the bridge pilings.
The lines stayed slack
until a red and white
floater fell below
the bay’s polluted waves.

I thought I felt a flounder
heaving on the hook.
I reeled it up—
a fish,
cylindrical and silver.
Alert, black eyes peered
at me. He floundered
against the skiff’s side
with a barbed hook inside
his young, unscarred mouth.

The old men laughed:
flounder are flat
and brown.
He was small
and nothing special—
not a flounder.
But they didn't let him go.
They ground my catch up
into a pink paste, spotted
with specs of broken bone.
We threw the pieces off the boat
to chum the water.