"THE LONELY PIPEFISH"

THE LONELY PIPEFISH

by Barbara Howes

Up, up, slender   

         As an eel’s

         Child, weaving   

Through water, our lonely   

Pipefish seeks out his dinner,

         Scanty at best; he blinks

         Cut-diamond eyes—snap—he   

         Grabs morsels so small

Only a lens pinpoints them,

But he ranges all over

         That plastic preserve—dorsal   

         Fin tremulous—snap—and   

         Another çedilla

Of brine shrimp’s gone ...

We talk on of poetry, of love,

         Of grammar; he looks   

         At a living comma—   

         Snap—sizzling about

In his two-gallon Caribbean

And grazes on umlauts for breakfast.

         His pug nosed, yellow

         Mate, aproned in gloom,   

         Fed rarely, slumped,

Went deadwhite, as we argued on;   

That rudder fin, round as a

         Pizza cutter, at the

         End of his two inch

         Fluent stick self, lets his eyes

Pilot his mouth—snap ...

Does his kind remember? Can our kind forget?

(Photo from here.)