The Fish

I caught a tremendous fish and held him beside the boat half out of water, with my hands a little cupped like buckets. He didn’t fight. He hadn’t fought at all. He hung a grunting weight, a drab and enormous fish like a monster from the deep, with scales like decay, but it was a beauty – dim, fluttering, and silver, like the surface of a lake, quiet and whispering to me about the distances he’d traveled just to meet me here.

I looked into his eyes and saw the ocean reflected, whole armies of fish streaming toward the surface and another world would suck him down. I knew then I would let him go.

I let the fish go.

• Elizabeth Bishop

• Elizabeth Bishop