W.M. Tidmarsh
Tackle Box
Sorting through I found the photo of him
Holding that enormous pike he’d caught
(Its savage, yellow eye, like Mr Punch’s
Still, in death, threatening merry hell).
He’d played it half an hour before he netted it
And ended up breathless, white and trembling
With the excitement of it, so we thought.
He didn’t watch the priesting and the weighing
And sat for the snap with it across his knees
Too tired to shift to get in better light.
That was his last time out. He dived deep then
And when he surfaced hadn’t shed the hook.
And all the time the line was tightening
That hauled him slowly to the gasping shallows
Where the mesh of tubes held him spent
While the priest with his last rites was summoned.
He was proud of that fish; we wanted to lay it
Atop his coffin in place of a wreath
But someone considered it indecorous.
So after the funeral we took it to the tip
And flung it, with some roses, in a skip.
W. M. Tidmarsh has been writing and publishing poems in a wide variety of magazines and anthologies for a number of years and has won prizes in national and international competitions. He is a member of the British Haiku Society and has a particular interest in the haiku and other Japanese verse forms. He lives in Market Harborough.
Page(s) 47
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