"Ode to the Fish" by Ellen Bass

Daniel Danger

Nights when I can’t sleep, I listen to the sea lions

barking from the rocks off the lighthouse.

I look out the black window into the black night

and think about fish stirring the oceans.

Muscular tuna, their lunge and thrash

churning the water, whipping up a squall,

storm of hunger. Herring cruising,

river of silver in the sea, wide as a lit city.

And all the small breaths: pulse

of frilled jellyfish, thrust of squid,

frenzy of krill, transparent skin glowing

green with the glass shells of diatoms.

Billions swarming up the water column each night,

gliding down at dawn. They’re the greased motor

that powers the world. Shipping heat

to the arctic, hauling cold to the tropics,

currents unspooling around the globe.

My room is so still, the bureau lifeless,

and on it, inert, the paraphernalia of humans:

keys, coins, shells that once rocked in the tides—

opalescent abalone, pearl earrings.

Only the clock’s sea-green numerals

register small changes. And shadows

the moon casts—fan of maple branches—

tick across the room. But beyond the cliffs

a blue whale sounds and surfaces, cosmic

ladle scooping the icy depths. An artery so wide,

I could swim through into its thousand-pound heart.

"Ode to the Fish" by Ellen Bass from Like a Beggar. © Copper Canyon Press, 2014.