Fish Dreams

By Robert Wrigley

She thinks the caught trout's eye must see
a monstrous face, for after all
its slick belly boils in her acid hand
and the hook's fluke knits the delicate jaw
half-closed. But who knows?

Could you, so landed, understand
the majesty of God might live
among ten thousand types of fire?
Such beautiful meats we also might have been,
happily bereft of love and the black pearl

of emptiness our solitude protects.
Except she puts the hook and line aside
and enters the river and kneels there,
asking the current to kiss the flesh her now
flameless hands would caress again to life.

Narrow and cold the fish's world, and sleepless too, 
they say. But think of the long night winter must be, 
how, nuzzling the dark silt depths, 
even a trout might dream of her-that hand,
the bottomless sky, the same terrible blue of the eye.

Matthew 17: 24–27

When they reached Capernaum, the collectors of the temple tax came to Peter and said, “Does your teacher not pay the temple tax?” He said, “Yes, he does.” And when he came home, Jesus spoke of it first, asking, “What do you think, Simon? From whom do kings of the earth take toll or tribute? From their children or from others?” When Peter said, “From others,” Jesus said to him, “Then the children are free. However, so that we do not give offense to them, go to the sea and cast a hook; take the first fish that comes up; and when you open its mouth, you will find a coin; take that and give it to them for you and me.”