The Lonely Pipefish
Up, up, slender
As an eel’s
Child, weaving
Through water, our lonely
Pipefish seeks out his dinner,
Scanty at best; he blinks
Cut-diamond eyes—snap—he
Grabs morsels so small
Only a lens pinpoints them,
But he ranges all over
That plastic preserve—dorsal
Fin tremulous—snap—and
Another çedilla
Of brine shrimp’s gone ...
We talk on of poetry, of love,
Of grammar; he looks
At a living comma—
Snap—sizzling about
In his two-gallon Caribbean
And grazes on umlauts for breakfast.
His pug nosed, yellow
Mate, aproned in gloom,
Fed rarely, slumped,
Went deadwhite, as we argued on;
That rudder fin, round as a
Pizza cutter, at the
End of his two inch
Fluent stick self, lets his eyes
Pilot his mouth—snap ...
Does his kind remember? Can our kind forget?
Barbara Howes, “The Lonely Pipefish” from The Blue Garden. Copyright © 1972 by Barbara Howes. Reprinted with the permission of Wesleyan University Press.
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Poet Barbara Howes 1914–1996
Subjects Relationships, Nature, Pets
Poetic Terms Free Verse
Poems by Barbara Howes
Poem Categorization
SUBJECT Relationships, Nature, Pets
Poetic Terms Free Verse
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