The Granddaddy of All Fish Out of Water
The wheels will always roll to the edge
if unchecked; I find myself rocking
to ancient tides. Someone says, manic,
but I'm not a young flounder anymore.
I keep one eye still on the birds
that once would have made a meal of me.
Much of this world is just as dark as I remember
it was when I swimming and blending in
with sand. From time to time a child will call
and ask advice: you get a few hooks
with the opportunities. The dial-tone kicks in
after a long contemplative pause.
I saw more than my fair share of frying pans,
barbeque grills too. I should have said this first:
I come from a long line of mudskippers
and flying fish. It's true: we never used to live
to be as old as I am; I blame the antibiotics
flushed into the sea; but who knows for sure,
we never had sunblock before—
I'm nearly a whitefish with it on.
Just lately, I’ve begun to fantasize
of Viking funerals and floating of to the sun.
Sometimes I think I've been in this chair
pushing pencils in the rat race too long.
Every night I lay my body down
in a bed of bread crumbs.
My nightmares are floured ghosts
their furious gills undulating
under a roasting, lemon-sliced sun.
They rise up with angelic fins
and tearful, tinny eyes.
Each morning I gulped my coffee
trying hard not to spill it on my tie.
I supposed some might have called it
an uneventful life, not knowing
where I came from.
The tide rises with the approach of the moon—
I always feel it tugging at my bones.
I check the hand-breaks on my chair;
I'm not yet ready return to the sea.
J. P. Dancing Bear is the author of nine collections of poetry, most recently, Inner Cities of Gulls (2010, Salmon Poetry). His next two books will be Family of Marsupial Centaurs through Iris Press in 2011, and Fish Singing Foxes through SalmonPoetry in 2012. His poems have been published in Mississippi Review, Third Coast, DIAGRAM, Verse Daily and many other publications. He is editor for the American Poetry Journal and Dream Horse Press. Bear also hosts the weekly hour-long poetry show, Out of Our Minds, on public station, KKUP and available as podcasts.
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