Deserts of Vast Eternity

 

Deserts of Vast Eternity

 

Most fighting fish are stupid –

yes, they are stupid.

 

Swimming in deserts of vast eternity,

except, you associate deserts with sand

and fish swimming on land

are, on the whole, scarcely found.

 

But, define stupid and you may conclude

that these are fish holding views

in conflict with you

 

and yours. Frustrating, is it not?

Here comes a steaming great polyglot

of aquatic subrational species

swimming in and amongst the intellectual faeces

that serves as a subsurface pelagic zone

they are pleased to dub home.

 

I speak not to disprove what it is you deem

logical – you may think that to me they seem

unworthy of gills – but this is not ethics

when I caution you they keep having sex.

 

Maybe, like me, you feel pathos pull

at you - a new and inexperienced school

swimming enraptured into our aforesaid pool –

perhaps let’s call it their induction,

for argument’s sake – or preparation –

really, it is all one.

 

But there are some who say: ‘come, come,’

and with oxidised fins beckon,

then pack them all on

a multi-coloured, sub-surface contraption

that will convey them to meeting on meeting

in order to knock out invention

and pack them with stuffing.

 

Why, some become nothing but teddy bears!

I have seen it and I swear

it confounds all rationality. Only yesterday

I was trapped. A flying fish  who stayed

atrophied in thought some 40 years too long

found her way onto the quarterdeck.

 

Her words, such as they were,

belied a life that, to her, was full - so sure

she was. ‘I have seen such worlds

since I retired, and filled my belly

with meat and drink, I slept

in the finest hotels and met

such celebrated fish as turn out on pitches,

and there I took these pictures.’

 

And soon she swooned

for she had stayed out of her pool

so long – no listeners there had heart enough

to throw her back amongst such stuff

as dreams are made of.

 

But yet – who is to say that such piscation

does not bring the shoals elation?

There is validity in the common view

and safety in the cluster -

any ideas to the contrary will not pass muster

and can safely be dismissed –

 

Afterall, most fighting fish

are stupid. Yes, they are stupid to swim 

just deserts there

and find nothing

but the opportunistic predator.