The fish in his electric blue jacket peered above his shades
Spat voluminously
Snorted at the worm baited hook
Hovered
Too deep for the gannets
Too sharp for the anglers
Poised acutely between predation and obtuseness
The sudden splash of a water skier
All legs and lost bikini top
The speed boat carving an arc in the watery roof
The anglers hastily retrieving their worms
Fearful of entanglement
Maquereau!
The air thick with terms of icthyological endearment
The sea below resonating to the throb of sputtering engines
Like a deserted bar beneath a brothel
More portent than potent
Importunate, infertile
Everything and everyone lost in an empty vastness
Punctuated by the startled flash of a tail
As somewhere in the deep, the fish was, of a sudden, gone
Harvey Taylor Art and Performance 