ANOTHER FISHY TALE

Even before I watched the Spielberg film, Jaws, back in the 1970s, I often experienced nightmares where I found myself swimming in dark water, aware that I was not alone and that something shapeless and malign lurked there beneath the surface.

  WAR BABIES

He shot me from behind a tree or I shot him. I don’t remember.
It hardly matters. One of us was dead. 

We started out again. I ran and hid. He headed to the water’s edge.
Each day, we played at soldiers, killing time till we grew up, in ferny woods beside the reedy pond. 

That day I was The Beastly Hun
and he, the noble Brit. 

Wild geese flew overhead like Messerschmitts
in a rasp of angry noise. 

I crouched with wooden rifle, planned my strategy, then heard him yell and knew something was wrong.
I ran. 

He pointed, gesturing. 
Something. Out there. It was. I saw. 

I spotted, on the pond, ripples spreading, nothing else, 
and he was too excited to make sense.

The flying geese had taken every sound away. 

Around our muddy brogues, the water seemed to undulate. 

I skimmed a flat stone out and watched it skip.



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