Fish Poem at Atrium

The marvellous Atrium Poetry has published my poem ‘Watching a Fish on a Cutting Board‘ today. Very many thanks to Holly and Claire for picking it. I am so pleased.

I wrote this one a while ago, I can’t remember why or when but I imagine I had been preparing fish for dinner. I always find fish rather scary, to be honest, and it takes me a while to build up the courage to handle them. This is mainly because they look like they should be alive, or they might simply be resting and are about to wriggle into my arms. Also, I don’t like the wetness of their scales and don’t get me started on the fins, as for the eyes … I tend to watch them for quite a while.

The other thing relevant to this poem is the fish farm that’s near us. It’s a beautiful place, and I can’t imagine a better situation for a fish, if it had the choice, to be farmed. I think the farm used to breed trout but nowadays it’s koi and goldfish and other ornamental fish, and coarse fish, I think. Anyway, Bob has been given permission to photograph the farm and I have tagged along on a couple of occasions, I find it fascinating.

The forty or so ponds are large and rectangular, set in the countryside amongst fields and hedges with water being pumped up through the chalk via a borehole. It’s very peaceful and they seem well looked after with plenty of room to swim. Each pond has, what I believe to be, an automatic feeder and holds groups of fish at a particular stage of development. Sometimes they leap.