Caught
Two tankers sit at the split between
sky and water,
our ankles are knit by rockpool eddies
and arms wrap the other as linen,
we are one cloth, bound.
Rock fishermen arrive, its time,
they throw lines from precipitous edges,
their rods cut arches against smashed foam
travelling the jag of the escarpment
in rapid explosions of birth.
Then shimmering silver, sparks
tossed from a frightened fish desperate to live.
A trophy photo is taken and
the fish is thrown back in.
Neither of us can throw the other back in
our capes of scales dazzle still,
we are caught on the sharpest hook
of imagination, reeled in, pull free but jump
on the hook again.
The trap of survival.
There is no registry of rules
but a bond that recognises our total.
We're stars gazing at our galaxy,
a blaze of globulus spray splashed across
the netted blackness of
sky's own catch of silver.
