A Wreath to the Fish by Nancy Willard

Who is this fish, still wearing its wealth, flat on my drainboard, dead asleep, its suit of mail proof only against the stream? What is it to live in a stream, to dwell forever in a tunnel of cold, never to leave your shining birthsuit, never to spend your inheritance of thin coins? And who is the stream, who lolls all day in an unmade bed, living on nothing but weather, singing, a little mad in the head, opening her apron to shells, carcasses, crabs, eyeglasses, the lines of fishermen begging for news from the interior--oh, who are these lines that link a big sky to a small stream that go down for great things: the cold muscle of the trout, the shining scrawl of the eel in a difficult passage, hooked--but who is this hook, this cunning and faithful fanatic who will not let go but holds the false bait and the true worm alike and tears the fish, yet gives it up to the basket in which it will ride to the kitchen of someone important, perhaps the Pope, who rejoices that his cook has found such a fish and blesses it and eats it and rises, saying, “Children, what is it to live in the stream, day after day, and come at last to the table, transfigured with spices and herbs, a little martyr, a little miracle; children, children, who is this fish?”

From “Water Walker” (Alfred A. Knopf: $9.95; 88 pp.; 0-679-72171-1), Willard’s eighth collection of poems. Willard, author of the Newbery Award-winning book of poems for children, “A Visit to William Blake’s Inn,” and of the novel “Things Invisible to See,” was educated at Stanford and at the University of Michigan. 1989, Nancy Willard. Reprinted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf Inc.