The Story of the Fish and the Eagle
Once upon an ocean, far out at sea
An eagle soared through the sky
“I am alone here” He said to the fish
And pondering what he could have himself for dinner he asked
…”how long do you expect to live?
Upon sight of the great eagle hovering overhead, the fish, who were many got a tassel hot and
bothered
After dithering for a moment
They swam deeper into the water
Where they drifted in with the current, fed upon plankton and seaweed, got fatter,
and for a while forgot about eagle
Life was more or less undisturbed deep down under
Sometimes fish would pass turtles
Whizzing by and without a blink of an eye they would find them tailing behind flippers, whisked
along for the ride
Those were the high adrenaline moments but mostly life was slow and easy
One day fish
found themselves in the mid pacific, in some un yet swam stretch of sea
where travelling in a warm current they caught sight of the waters surface,
and suddenly,
there up ahead
was eagle
before anyone could duck diver, eagle sharply stepped in and with his beak took a great bite into
fish
With nothing else to lose fish opened his guts wide splaying himself in two halves
and as he took his last breath
he said
“you, who think you are alone
do not exist anymore than me
do not act in greed
for we are of the same net, made just of different feathers, scales and colours
while you cast your eyes wide over this ocean and take your dinners pick
less you forgot your losses, and enjoy all of me, savour every morcel i’ve got
With fish in beak, eagle couldn’t hear him splutter,
and flew off to his self-proclaimed perch high upon a cliff
where he sat to eat his dinner
“what a tasty fish” he though as he ate, I’ll have to go back and catch some more of that shoal and
as he gobbled on faster, in
a hurry to get going ahead…
His feathers turned to flesh and his tail to scales
So shocked was eagle that he had, in an instant, turned into a mermaid,
that he panicked and froze into the rocks on the NSW coast
where he still remains
only to be admired by the few passing tourists that have time to stop, look and
take her all in.
Written 18th June 2020.
