Elizabeth Bishop, her fish, old Donald Palm and me

Old Donald Palm is dead. I found him in a New York Times

article about nursing home facilities.

And Elizabeth Bishop's fish, well, although Bishop

set the fish free, by now I assume the fish is dead.

So is Elizabeth Bishop who caught the fish but through

sympathetic observation of its beauty, let it go.

You should read this poem before eating a full meal.

It takes time to digest poetry, to make sense

of complex things like life and death, like hanging

from a hook at the port side of a weathered smack, 

gumming your last meal of mashed potatoes and boiled carrots

or penning a poem until you've stuck the ending. 

But as I've advised before. Don't agonize over sticking the ending.

Look what it did to old Donald Palm and Elizabeth Bishop

and the rainbow-colored beauty of her tremendous fish.

A simple period mark will do a good job of it.