TRIP TO DEAL POEM 6

The sign was clear, but where the fish was we did not know. Walking down the shore we found several fish bars and settled on one in the centre of the front with tables and a menu. Gorging on fish and chips and diet coke, we also had salted squid. Bliss!

---

"It is useless not to seek, not to want, for when you cease to seek you start to find, and when you cease to want, then life begins to ram her fish and chips down your gullet until you puke, and then the puke down your gullet until you puke the puke, and then the puked puke until you begin to like it." Samuel Beckett

Fresh Fish

So salty was the air

And the night sober

We could have been at the sea

In a dilapidated but grand hotel

Leafing through each other

With a perspective as hard and

Visceral as salt itself.

Before the water

Before the tide

The fisherman baits his ware

And tries his trusted method

On a being slippery and supple

An ancient task this man is

Connected to the ebb and flow

Of nature in a way unusual

To us now.

We buy his wares and devour it,

Bite by bite we find the task easy,

For to kill and eat is natural to mankind.

Swallow by swallow our succour is met,

Our energies rise and I am left satisfied.

Fresh fish, fresh air and fresh love,

All palliative and progressive,

For future ferment and harvest,

We know the key is love.