A Poem by Louis Marvin

Fish

There is a picture in our kitchen of a humpback whale in Maui,

 

but a whale is a mammal, for this bit though, we don't give a dammal

There is a whale in our kitchen,

        and my dad and I saw a mother and a calf in the waters of Oahu,

                  and my wife and I saw some on our honeymoon in Kauai

 

Even now next to that whale calendar picture, sits our Chinese fighting fish, who is the 4th member of our family

 

Yesterday our daughter called excitedly on the phone to proclaim that we had some new red and blue striped fish, and some new goldfish had joined our family

 

Memory of a little boy:

        we had as many as 5 fish tanks going at once in our house,

                  and I remember going from tank to tank,

                           tranquil as I peered into them

         I can never bypass the fish at the pet stores

 

We have snorkeled at Hanauma Bay, where my niece had to be rescued by her dad because her bag of food was bitten by a big fish and it spilled, and lots of big fish had a

 

free-for-all, which she was in the middle of

 

In the middle of fish, in the middle of the ocean, I am surrounded by fish memories and fish memories, a school of fish memories:

 

San Souci Beach and snorkeling,

                  my daughter snorkeling

                           and the familiar fish and reef

                                     And the big eel that slipped

                                              into the War Memorial crack

 

The fish we have seen along the beach next to the aquarium, eels and humuhumu (my daughter can say it) and puffers all at high and low tides

 

The hours spent at the aquarium, each time learning something new, that wonderful Waikiki Aquarium, worked by the University of Hawaii

My wife has said that she would eat fish every day, and although my consumption has gone way up, I'm not an everyday man, but a hell of a lot man though:

 

Todai-to die and go to fish heaven

 

Sushi at Genki, sashimi at Yanagi, and a real mix at Shirokiya

 

Hand rolls and a bowl of fish eggs, shark steak sandwiches and butterfish, butterfish, butterfish

 

Fish for breakfast plate Zippy's and the markets, markets, Ranch Market 99 and Chinatown's fresh fish

 

We see fish, we swim with fish, we read about fish, we feed our fish, we eat fish. Living here in the middle of the pacific, with two girls that love fish, surrounded by a fishing nation, with a history of fish, let me net it in one word:

 

                                                 FISH.

 

 

louis marvin

on this pacific island with chinese girls

born burbank, lived phoenix, loe the island

teacher, coach, ex-soldier, writer/artist, tennis champion