Nameless

I met a red-tailed cat fish, with eyes on the top of its head and three flexing whiskers leant against the glass   Its tank was more of a room in a pale shade of blue – no stones, no weeds, no pretence – the spartan home of a trappist, an ascetic   It lay, tail bent to one side, soft in its fish fat, its black and white skin almost furry   It stared, without blinking, at those who came to its neck of the fish shop, the part of the world its presence had filled   In the bulbous white of one eye was a deep red vein He once had been sold, it said on a note on the glass, but had wasted away and, to try and relieve him, revive him, they’d returned him to here, to the muffled sounds, to review and consider the visitors   Human and fish silently study the other and seek for some meaning Or, maybe he reads me better than I him; he need not negotiate; he’s wider and shrewder than me – me, just another fish, stranded and bloodshot in eye