Pomatomus saltatrix, you showed me how to love
In lapping of the waves against the gallows’ posts above
The gentle bay, forever clear, where barnacles sing of
A heaven freed of ugliness and brutal death thereof
The fisher boy had broken yet like tawny August dawn
A tiny speck of cold and sweat dripped slowly down upon
A bare yet gilded muscle with its ligaments withdrawn
To cast that iron charm into the heart where it has gone
I sat upon the planks wrapped up in woven reverie
To think this playful channel leads a vein into the sea
Releasing hopeful salts licked from my toes by currents free
To travel ‘round the world and bring its romance back to me
And for a morning’s tragedy we lay there for a prayer
To suffer in our skeletons the Angel Falls of air
And nothing but this chill could bring us to a steaming stare
Till God tickled the line and led a cold disciple there
My fisher boy engaged at once to fight the flailing beast
His bones erect, he knocked, and in a flurry, mine released
To stinging ocean blown all of a sudden from the East
And more than helpless bluefish felt her supple skin deceased
For Fisherman pulled out his blade and drew it ‘cross the head
And no blue blood spat forth, but glowed a soft inside of red
As beautiful as Eucharist; as freely as it bled;
Whatever fate the Coming brings, the Age pronounced it dead

by Alejandra Lewandowski, ’11