from Portraits of Fish by Ian Bickford

i.

Because I’ve been indoors all morning,
the windows stone-white
with the mist from the bath
water; because

the first cycle is never enough
to dry the laundry;
because the teakettle whistling
has woken me from where I doze

on the sofa, I rake
my hair, button my shirt,
and sit at the table
with a red pen to make notes

in a notebook. But in the absence
of language, I draw the outlines
of fish instead, page after
page, snapper and mackerel. Fins,

wide eyes, bodies so long
they threaten the edges of the paper.
I draw no ocean around them.
The fish contain the ocean.

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I remember

By the first of August
the invisible beetles began
to snore and the grass was
as tough as hemp and was
no color–no more than
the sand was a color and
we had worn our bare feet
bare since the twentieth
of June and there were times
we forgot to wind up your
alarm clock and some nights
we took our gin warm and neat
from old jelly glasses while
the sun blew out of sight
like a red picture hat and
one day I tied my hair back
with a ribbon and you said
that I looked almost like
a puritan lady and what
I remember best is that
the door to your room was
the door to mine.

— Anne Sexton

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The Guardians

The young, having risen early, had gone,
Some with excursions beyond the bay-mouth,
Some toward lakes, a fragile reflected sun.
Thunder-heads drift, awkwardly, from the south.

The old watch them. They have watched the safe
Packed harbours topple under sudden gales,
Great tides irrupt, yachts burn at the wharf
That on clean seas pitched their effected sails.

There are silences. These, too, they endure:
Soft comings-on; soft after-shocks of calm.
Quietly they wade the disturbed shore;
Gather the dead as the first dead scrape home.

— Geoffrey Hill

your catfish friend

yesyes:

If I were to live my life
in catfish forms
in scaffolds of skin and whiskers
at the bottom of a pond
and you were to come by
one evening
when the moon was shining
down into my dark home
and stand there at the edge
of my affection
and think, “It’s beautiful
here by this pond. I wish
somebody loved me,”
I’d love you and be your catfish
friend and drive such lonely
thoughts from your mind
and suddenly you would be
at peace,
and ask yourself, “I wonder
if there are any catfish
in this pond? It seems like
a perfect place for them.”
— Richard Brautigan

From The Book of Hours

I am too alone in the world, and yet not alone enough
to make every hour holy
I am too small in the world, and yet not tiny enough
just to stand before you like a thing,
dark and shrewd.
I want my will, and I want to be with my will
as it moves towards deed;
and in those quiet, somehow hesitating times,
when something is approaching
I want to be with those who are wise
or else alone.
I want always to be a mirror that reflects your whole being,
and never to be too blind or too old
to hold your heavy, swaying image.
I want to unfold.
Nowhere do I want to remain folded, there I am lie.
And I want my meaning
true for you. I want to describe myself
like a painting I studied closely for a long, long time,
like a word I finally understood,
like the pitcher of water I use every day,
like the face of my mother,
like a ship
that carried me
through the deadliest storm of all.

—Rainer Maria Rilke

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