Ode To Rough Fish
I speak for the carp, fat on mud-bloat
and algae, orange-lipped lipper of algae surfaces,
round rotter of the banks of hydroelectric rivers.
Not the quick thin-meated trout
darting his pretty life in rare rocks of high streams.

Ah, and the rooting sucker, round tubed mouth distended
to bobble rocks, worms, offal, whatever
he can turn up without himself turning up.

Yes, here's to you, scumsuckers of the stagnant
reservoirs and sludge-filled rivers, livers on
waste discharge, suckers down of anything we can
slop on you at your worst moments.

Long live you who will live longer whether
we say so or not, who would as soon wallow in
the hollow of a bloated river-soaked moose corpse
as live up to a size 20 Coachman on a 7X tippet.
You live up to nothing and we will never live you down,
for you horrid-mouthed mouthers of death and
worse than death have found something stronger
than the slats of your hard flat scales.

Where a trout jumps for the thin wings of a fresh-
hatched caddis, you jump for nothing but air
through the filth and oil slicks.
Where a trout darts at a nymph behind a rock, you
could care less; you move the sonofabitching rock
and all the mud around it. Yes, you too will
find the nymph and eat it, but you will also eat
the mud and love it.
Yes, you love the mud.
Mud is your guts; thus, your guts are always distended
in thick slabs of carp meat--sucker meat.
You and your wallowing, blubbery truth.
You and your truth that has made a heaven of sewage.
Why didn't they call you rainbow or golden,
for if God gave a promise and warning
in one fell swoop,
you are it,
arching from your black lake
completely clear and shining of water
then falling back
splat.

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