Armoured for past wars
In the scutes of submerged centuries
Till here, now, I fight this tightening line,
I’m a bloody great catch,
I give as good as I get,
But my body of oil cannot match
The scouring of my watery element:
This oxygenated flow of life
By a mass of dam walls betrayed,
Or antibiotic chemical chokes
That convulse along my blood
Like smoke in tumoured lungs,
My element become my grave.
Stubborn veteran of the old sagas
Sung from Yangtze to Vinlandia
Surging from shadows before time
My barbel tremor of origins
Sways in waters, ancient as planets,
My swim currents you through
The begin and end of things.
My legendary length in angler arms
Shrunk to the momentary ecstasy
Of an Instagram of victory
Or crumbled into caviar,
The beluga you crave to accompany
The Buluva, the Bentley or the Bottega.
The great saga of the vascular rivers,
Ripples in journeying muscles of song,
Become reed shrouded ghost silences,
A witness to the world, lost forever.
Notes:
Sturgeon are one of the oldest living species on Earth. However this species is now Critically Endangered because of over-fishing and habitat destruction.
The Ghost Dance: a North American Indian religious cult of the second half of the 19th century, based on the performance of a ritual dance that, it was believed, would drive away white people and restore the traditional lands and way of life
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