Eels

The eel fisherman

Fishing for eels at the estuary
Gave him an insight unique to his trade.
As he filled up his baskets with wriggling fruit
He saw how a wriggling life could be made.

Their squirming and squelching resulted in knots
As they tried to recapture their rightful domain.
But there only awaited the fishmonger's slab
For the eels who would never see water again.

Mud, water, mud, water, fishmonger's slab.
The inevitability hits with a smack,
Unless there are eels that don't swim with the tide,
Who wriggle away from a life in the pack.

But away from the eel tide, wherever he looked,
Not even a solitary eel could be found.
Were there really no eels who escaped from the hook,
Who avoided the deathly predictable round?

Then one evening at last as his basket was filled
He saw a small movement way out on the wave
And a spray rose like laughter as hundreds of eels
Skimmed swiftly away from his fisherman's grave.

Stretched out on the shore at their usual stand
He looked at the line of his fellow eel men
Then kicked over his basket, abandoned his bank,
And he never returned to catch eels there again.