Pat Borthwick
Bottom Feeders
Daily, I have watched them swim past me.
I see the ripple of their coming,
the mud-bubbles of their lives, surface.
They know I’m here, listening.
They angle for my attention in concentric swirls
then tweak my line, tilt my goose-quill float
against the flow. It dips, it dips again,
runs back across the current
before disappearing down
into the inky slime and reed roots.
I could have reeled them in, tightened myself
against their juddering tug,
kept tension thrummed on the line
until they had no place else to be
except drawn into my net, published in air.
But today, I have let them go, all of them.
Left them where they are, bottom feeders
gathering the dark into their gills. Not fully formed.
Filling their deep parchment-coloured bellies
with simple cells. Being there.
Beyond the piers and stanchions of the city bridge
I can hear the morning market shouts setting out
their slippery stalls. Such volumes of bright young fish,
framed by plastic parsley, whose flesh will never know
the slow epicure of flavour as it percolates through mud.
Page(s) 10
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