Barbara Howes: The Lonely Pipefish

Up, up, slender

         As an eel’s

         Child, weaving

Through water, our lonely

Pipefish seeks out his dinner,

         Scanty at best; he blinks

         Cut-diamond eyes—snap—he

         Grabs morsels so small

Only a lens pinpoints them,

But he ranges all over

         That plastic preserve—dorsal

         Fin tremulous—snap—and

         Another çedilla

Of brine shrimp’s gone ...

We talk on of poetry, of love,

         Of grammar; he looks

         At a living comma—

         Snap—sizzling about

In his two-gallon Caribbean

And grazes on umlauts for breakfast.

         His pug nosed, yellow

         Mate, aproned in gloom,

         Fed rarely, slumped,

Went deadwhite, as we argued on;

That rudder fin, round as a

         Pizza cutter, at the

         End of his two inch

         Fluent stick self, lets his eyes

Pilot his mouth—snap ...

Does his kind remember? Can our kind forget?

From The Blue Garden (1972). Reminscent of Elizabeth Bishop, slightly less solemn and more involved in the world. Howes should be better known; it seems she never sought fame.