A taste of fish

Way back in 1994 I was finding my voice as a poet, maybe a bit over-exuberant in my use of language, and sometimes tying myself in verbal knots as a result. But when it worked I was pleased with the outcome. With a science background, and working as a scientific librarian, I often used my scientific knowledge in poems. So if I was writing about geology, I made sure I got it right; same in biology and chemistry. At that time I used to index science books for publishers, as a wee sideline, and while many of them were geological, my principal subject, I took what was offered. I remember I had been indexing a book about hake - biology and fisheries, and I mentioned to a poet friend that I was a bit fed up with it. 'Write a poem about fish,' she said. So I did, and this is it. It was published in my first collection Thirteen Ways of Looking At the Highlands, And More (Diehard publishers, 1996, and now out of print).

A taste of fish

Husbanding volition in the dark pool,

mouthing and gill-gushing water,

tasting chemical memories

from the birthplace spring,

the home-tang of an imprinting riffle,

the hen salmon’s programmed need proceeds.

Over fear she forces the fall upward,

tail-strokes levered by pink muscles,

flinging her body in a froth-skimming arc

to slither over the lip’s slimed slabs

and flicker through the slick black surge

of the top-water, into the slack.

In a brutal balance,

body is lost to make movement,

nothing else weighs,

oils emulsify to fill yolk sacs,

bones decalcify, deform,

scales tear from spongy skin,

and, in the final finishing

of her blind and battering race,

a felt and tasted presence,

a red need beside her, under, round,

bestows a milky blessing on her generation.

Copyright © Colin Will 1996