Tag: fish pond

A Spark Extinguished

barnstormingblog1 Comment

winterfish

winterpond3

The water going dark only
makes the orange seem brighter,
as you race, and kiss, and spar
for food, pretending not
to notice me. For this gift
of your indifference, I am
grateful. I will sit until
the pond goes black, the last
orange spark extinguished.
~Robert Peake from “Koi Pond”

 

The fish slow in winter sleep,
resting on the pond bottom,
needing nothing from above.
Their fins and tails sway in passing
of the current yet
they remain stilled,
a stark orange smudge
in the cold water.
When morning comes,
the fish bleed out orange
to reflect the overhead dawn
that tries in vain
to stir them back to life.
A spark extinguished,
their pilot flame turned low
until the reignition
return of longer days–
the hopeful promise
of spring.

 

winterpond

dawn12221

Quieter Beneath the Quiet

barnstormingblog1 Comment

mudpondkoi

Our shadows bring them from the shadows:
a yolk-yellow one with a navy pattern
like a Japanese woodblock print of fish scales.
A fat 18-karat one splashed with gaudy purple
and a patch of gray. One with a gold head,
a body skim-milk-white, trailing ventral fins
like half-folded fans of lace.
A poppy-red, faintly disheveled one,
and one, compact, all indigo in faint green water.
They wear comical whiskers and gather beneath us
as we lean on the cement railing
in indecisive late-December light,
and because we do not feed them, they pass,
then they loop and circle back. Loop and circle. Loop.
“Look,” you say, “beneath them.” Beneath them,
like a subplot or a motive, is a school
of uniformly dark ones, smaller, unadorned,
perhaps another species, living in the shadow
of the gold, purple, yellow, indigo, and white,
seeking the mired roots and dusky grasses,
unliveried, the quieter beneath the quiet.
~Susan Kolodny “Koi Pond, Oakland Museum”
mudpondkoiwateriris