On a Table

Fish head, well body minus the meat, filleted, with the guts hanging about


scales, scraped and piled on the old boards, in the wet sand


where the ever slightly running, spigot drips.


And flies, sitting quietly on the intestines


buzzing up at a nearby motion


only to settle back again


to what I can guess,


eating remains


today the fish,


one of god’s


creatures


swam with


all the grace


and speed of nature,


rippling and sparkling


against, above, beneath,


and through the clear green-blue


intra-coastal waters just south of the


bridge built by Civilian Conservation Corps


at the beginning of the war that ended most


of all the wars of Europe, at least, as they struggled


to end the Great Depression, and yet, those men are


as dead as the glorious fish, and they were glorious, too.


He is surely supper, and a good one, too, if I were eating him.


They are only dead, with their wives and half their kids, not heroes,


only trying to keep from dying too soon, and maybe they did, but died


anyway, and the flies eat the entrails and the old men’s bones rot beneath.


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Published on March 19, 2017 13:34
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