The Fishgutters in the Morning

I have seen them

taking their ease

some of them leaning

on the cinderblock wall

some of them

sitting on ledges

or resting on gravel

their low voices smouldering

their quick hands

withering like candlewick

and all of them knifeless

in this

all of them here

and taken away from

the sharp skill of their work

and even the men

are skeined in hairnets, heads caught

like the walked-through weave

of old barn cobwebs

and I imagine

them turning the doomed

scale-skinned harvest

and remember

a Chinese story from childhood

where the fisherman

found himself blessed by three wishes

when the fish in his hands

begged for its life

in a dream-water voice

and I think also

of old Santiago

his damaged hands

his marlin vanishing

in the shark belly of a blue-eyed sea

and I think of how I once watched

a woman

cleaning the smelt

with uncle up to his knees

in quicksilver spawn of moonlight

and I wonder was it my mother

was it me

at the table

a thousand spines on my plate

fine as watch springs

made for the measuring

of broken time

By John B.Lee