And so, there I was in the dark again
What was going to happen now I wondered ?
A moment ago, there had been a nightmare dangerous and threatening
It was like the film "The Magnificent Seven" from the Sixties I thought, the Western
(The one with Yul Brynner, Steve McQueen, Eli Wallach et al, I had always loved that one)
The nightmare was like the bandits descending upon the innocent little village
Looking to terrorise and plunder and pillage
Leaving the people all despairing, the little children and their mothers crying
But this time... this time things they would be different
This time there'd be a welcoming committee (the Seven)
"Ha! Ha!" the Bandit leader had laughed, "I see you've built new walls, you try to keep us out"
"No!" came back the reply, "those walls are there to keep you in...we deal in lead friend"
Now suddenly the tables were turned
It was their turn to feel afraid (the nightmare)
You could see it in them, see their faces drop/fall
All their bravado and bluster suddenly drained out
Yea! we'd called their bluff
And then, just like magic, like a puff of smoke
They were gone, just dissolved into nothing, into the darkness,
And so here I was, all alone again in the dark
What was going to happen now I wondered ?

Suddenly a little light appeared in the very top left hand corner
As I watched it I could see that it was growing larger
Pretty soon I could see what it was
It was a snake, a black headed thing like no snake you'd ever seen before
It was like it was moving at a tremendous speed
It looked agitated, enraged even
It was hissing, it's head going from side to side, its fangs showing,
It brought to my mind a fish we once found in a rock pool as kids after a high tide
A strange fish, it scuttered madly around its pool as if looking for a way out
It had these teeth and this fierce wicked look
So wet and slippery looking, it had an energy that was uncanny
It looked like it might jump out of its pool at any moment
It scared me just watching it.

From only being something tiny, now it had grown into something big, rearing up in front of you
You could see the black scales and the deep dark furrows about its face
The huge yellow eyes, the great fangs and the slithering tongue
It was like a jet black steam engine bearing down on you...hurtling toward you
Now it was nearly taking up the full field of my vision
It had grown huge and towering, threatening to overwhelm
I grew afraid, this was something different I'd never seen anything like this before
I decided it was time to go, I wasn't going to hang around
So I pulled out of the dream and awoke with a start
I thought for a few moments, what had I been through, what had I just seen ?
Then I started to castigate myself, why did you run, why didn't you face it, face it down
They were all bluffs, the whole lot of them
You would have seen what was behind it
I was afraid, was afraid I wouldn't get back, that I wouldn't be able to come back...
"Come back!!" I berated myself "come back to what exactly !!!
This world of pains and slow decay, of anxieties and humiliations...of faint joys...ever decreasing circles
There wasn't a whole lot to come back to, now was there
(Y'know I bet their all just waiting... just expecting to hear
"O! He passed away did he, well he was a strange bloke, wasn't he". That'll be my epitaph)".

Then I remembered... I remembered the wonderful old Irish myth/ legend "The Salmon of Knowledge"
(I don't know why that came into my head),
A magical fish, the Salmon of Knowledge lives in a sacred river,
It's said if anyone catches this fish and eats of its flesh the wisdom of the whole world will be theirs
A wise old poet/sage spends his life looking for the fish
Finally he catches it, he has a servant boy Fionn and has him cook the fish
He warns Fionn, under no circumstances eat of the flesh of this fish
But as the fish cooks on its spit over the fire
A blister forms on the fish and then suddenly bursts
Some oil from the fish spurts out and lands on his hand and burns him
He puts his finger in his mouth to ease the pain
And suddenly his eyes are opened to all the Wisdom of the World
When the wise poet sage returns, he sees straightaway the change in Fionn
The transformation that has occurred, the way Life seems to shine in him... (Fionn goes on to become one of the greatest of warriors
And to have many great adventures).

"Next time" I thought to myself, "next time I'll know what to expect, next time it'll be different".  Next time I'll be ready. Next time....

exotic fish swim
aquarium-like setting
~ Roku screensaver






Mark Toney © 2021

his leather palms grip the line
as the tuna fights for life.
it sings in psalms,
stinging strong,
shining in his eyes.

what use have you for words, o' fish?
o' tyrant of the sea?
your royal hues
of palace blues
defy all eulogy.

that string of silver, slicing fast
across his arching back
rends slivers til
the swells go still
or coils run out of slack.

and when that sun, that burning eye
sinks beneath the waves,
your wild run
of songs unsung
sets memories ablaze.

at last you rest, o' king of kings,
and glide toward the sky.
your final test
at his behest;
he's weeping as you die.

Blessed are the poorly, for theirs is the kingdom of mudflats

The dispirited streak turgid waters
sinuously, through unsettled feelings
in the wake of boats shedding
filaments of fuel,
sheen on a turbid infusion
and the cordgrass nods a resilience
or an apathy as the silt settles
on their Piscean gleam

Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see a salted heaven

Angelic Menhaden of the Atlantic,
are silvery stretches of scale,
dulled in death under a festering sun
and the retreating tide of dying waters
brined in ocean, freshwater spirited
to secret spaces, some dammed crevasse,
now  tumultuous  fate in a salted heaven

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness for they shall be filled

At the Tabgha of this intertidal palette
Cattails whisper beatitudes
latched onto the tails of wind gusts
and the plovers descended
in a litany of  bird song
amassed like the manna
trailing  tidal waters
as the sea swallows herself.
Blessed are the herons, the mallards,
the geese. Time is measured
in the passage of fish that
cycle themselves through the innards of birds

Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the rocks

The meek Menhaden, leaped
onto the rocks that hemmed the inlet,
escaping the hungry habits of herons.
They inherited Earth in agony    
pounding a rocky surface,
but the air I swim, had no water.
I prodded these  Menhaden of the Rock
to the fringe of retreating tides,
and they leaped to die once more
to breathe water that had no air

Blessed are those that mourn, for they shall be comforted

Blessed is the discomfiture
of my brackish tears
that streak marsh faces
as fish struggle out of dead water.
I take comfort I don't inhabit
tainted places or do I take comfort,
all places are the tint of poison,
the gleam of a genesis of sorrow

elusive
a school of silver fish in the net
all slick small enough to slip
drip through the cracks
gaps plink wriggle back
into the sea
where even the minnows swim free
so I stay on the waters and cast the nets again
and wait to haul in my next catch.

downpast where the divermin dont go
is an underwater sun
that casts a blackhole shadow
in to the fishes swim
but they donnot swim out
where oh where do they fishes go
after theybin drowngone in the shadow
after theybin infosucked by the blackhole
i say i dont know
but some days i think i seem them
floating on the cloud forms
as crows

Surer knowledge by cross examination
of witnesses than belief in imaginations
Will more certainty than mindless chance
Shakespeare was a man rather than monkeys
and Eve than washed up fishes learning to walk