Tuna Fish

Posted on June 3, 2003 in Book of Days Poems

Note: This is part of a series based on exercises from A Writer’s Book of Days. It’s something of a rebellion against the Friday Five and similar tupperware content memes.

Today’s topic: Once when I was….

Note: I started with this sentence and ended up somewhere else. The somewhere else was better than the start.

Sorry Charlie. Starkist doesn’t want tuna with good taste. Starkist wants tuna that taste good.

I rolled about in an ocean

in blue water, blue as the postcard shores

where the sea kissed the utter white sands.

I spun about, not certain whether I was

an albacore, a bonita, or a gigantic blue tuna.

I had no measure of myself against others

so I sought a school and swam with them.

The day came when the hooks of fishing boats

took some of us to be chopped, cooked, and screwed into little cans.

I swam on with the untaken, wondering if it had been a good choice

to join the school and discipline myself when the shiny barbs

floated down from the great bellies churning over us.

Or better to swim alone in the empty quarters of the sea

where they wouldn’t think to search.

I don’t know that it is even a question

in the part of my mind that is a tuna fish.

The death that pulls you upward may be

how they all expect to go

like we resign ourselves to cancer, heart attack or stroke.

---

Want to participate? First either get yourself a copy of A Writer’s Book of Days by Judy Reeves or read these guidelines. Then either check in to see what the prompt for the day is or read along in the book.

Tomorrow’ topic/prompt: What are you looking for?