Guest Poem by James Priestman

James Priestman is employed as a social worker in a community mental health team. He served for five years in the British Army and has held a senior management position in a local authority. He is Festival Director for the Malvern Festival of Biblical Literature (www.festivalofbiblicalliterature.co.uk). He has had poems published in Ambit and has performed his poetry (as James Pendle) at festivals across the UK (Youtube channel: JamesPendlePoet).

That Tremendous Fish

after Elizabeth Bishop

So, I let the fish go, but it did not swim away,
remaining instead port-side of the hired boat,
right eye staring unblinking into my startled gaze.

I raised the revs on the motor but it stalked me.
The bows pushed harder against algae and water,
the engine spilt rainbows, rainbows, rainbows.
 
That fish, which had not fought against my rod
and when netted looked defeated and sullen,
must have found forgotten zest, for when I reached the quay it leapt

into the vessel and lay twitching before my children
who had come down smiling at me to applaud
whatever catch I may have caught for them.

They all saw the five hooks in that veteran’s lip,
the snapped lines hanging down gills and breast –
medals for battles that should not have been fought.

And we all breathed in the terrible oxygen.