do you walk upon
water the exigent wet
do fishes know swim

Little betta fish,
swimming around in its aquarium.
I peer into the
depths. Lose myself.

I listlessly observe her for hours,
watching her beautiful fins flare.
She remains unbothered,
going about her usual business.

As I am locked in my room,
and she is locked in hers,
I consider her as my best friend.
We’ve spent a lot of time together.

I wish I could
touch her or talk to her
and tell her how much I appreciate her presence,
but I don’t think she would understand.

Although we stare at each other for hours
through the glass panes separating our two worlds
of air and water,
I feel lonely.

I’m terrified for the day
when my only friend
lies belly-up on the water surface.
Will the loneliness drown me too?

Wind your neck in
but with care,
so not to break the line
lest you drop your catch.

Wind your neck in
until I can take the weight
rest your game on the bank
fish out the hook

consider if to let it away
content with the win
not **** to fill to quench your lust

content with ambition and
laughter met

wind your neck in

Water whispers, froths and bubbles.
Tiny bodies swim in doubles,
Schooling along the edge of their world
Where the fish tank ends.

A panting tongue creates a mist;
Soft golden fur, tail in a twist,
Barking at the outside world
Where the window ends.

Poised and tense, smooth muscles coil
Whiskers twitch with internal turmoil
To track a leaf beyond her world
Where the sliding door ends.

Dreary shivers, dark and damp,
God's distant voice my only lamp.
I can only gape at the mad, mad world
Where my glass cage ends.

Fisherman is earth, his net is life,
Fish is Man, Ocean is heaven.
Sway by the earth, we dwell in life.
Entangle in this life, Earth is now home;
Ocean is just an illusion.
The fish move where the net moves,
The net move where the fisherman goes,
The fisherman move where the ocean drifts,
Man who dwell in life only see his net,
not both the drifting fisherman and ocean.

He sat at a table across from an aquarium
A fish gulped water and would watch him
He gulped coffee and watched a fish
He pushed his food around on his dish
They were friends you could say
They saw each other each and every day
They never had any words to share
So not great friends- to be fair
But they have a connection
Just a small touch of affection

And that's the best he had at the moment

I watched in the swirl, the blue fish paddle
steadily away from the boat,
knowing that it had been hooked before,
the wound protruding wormlike from his jaw.

Today would not be his last fight.
He would not be a photo prize.
He wanted not the weight of air,
just the restless, endless flow all around,
the homely tide.

Algae speckled his skin
refracting rainbow fingers
like prayers in the morning
and brown moldy spots on his lateral line
like vespers recited in a dark nave.

Swirls of lilies flowed beneath his belly
revealing his antiquity and mortality.

He danced defiantly along the reef,
shedding embedded sand,
corrupted water weighing him down
the worms wriggling on barbed Js above,
the anemones gesticulating alluringly beneath.

He once was suspended between ocean/heaven
everything green slipping off,
his blue mocked by the lighter sky,
his lungs rejecting its oxygen,
his blood rejecting its gravity
that cut his very being.

He was born with scales,
flexible bones Ill-suited for this rigid world,
born to glisten never knowing.  
more beautiful peony’s,
things more lovely than him
rooted in lands beyond his sight and ken.

His eyes seemed larger than mine
and in a certain graceful way
they had the heavy density of a stain glass panel
trying to contain all beauty in an icon.
They shifted only towards the light.

He stared mouth agape and every scar,
every hook wound fell off, revealed itself,
proof that he will never be any one’s prize.

Like everyone else, he had learned
the wisdom of the wound,
that life was not in victory,
but in surviving, the possibility,
the hope of catch and release.

I started my rusty boat
and in the dart of his rainbow
swimming away, swimming away,
I felt the thanks of his fin and tail,
as I moored in the direction home.c