A Fish Story

It’s the next time,
always,
that drives me. “Resting
on your laurels”
is a polite way
of describing

a spark-free body
reclining on a green bier
while friends and enemies
murmur around it.

They say
that fish never sleep,
swimming around
in the same pond
for their entire lives
trying to become huge and cagy,
and it’s a life of
pure feeding and shitting
that has no allure to anyone
who’s not a fish.  That’s what this
must look like, sometimes;
effort repeated
for no apparent purpose
except that it’s what I do
and it must be done.

But the next thing
is the purpose:
the possibility
that next time
I’ll rise above the surface,
catching some morsel
just outside my element;
or just being myself,
having been caught at last,
fighting against the reel
all the way to the shore.

When you see my silver
thrashing
know that I’m happiest then,
no longer some local legend
(the one that got away
who maybe doesn’t exist)

but the real thing.  No
resting on a bed of green
to be admired, weighed,
consumed, exaggerated.
Not yet.