In crystal streams,
all babbled bright,
where gem set currents jink and play;
Beneath a blackly velvet night,
quicksilver wolves do languid prey:
Half shadows ‘neath their liquid skies,
all phosphorescent twinks and sparks;
They patient scan,
with coal black eyes,
that firmament in watchful arcs:
Where sinuous they dance and glide,
each fluid as that rushing flow;
All flash and fin to scorn the tide,
their rhythmic sambas,
to and fro:
Assassins each in nature’s dance,
all stationed fast in shadowed swifts;
Fierce ivoried against the chance,
to seize upon *Tamara’s gifts.

Their hubris plump and dappled brown,
in every haughty,
silvered scale;
Dares each the river prince’s crown,
its sceptre,
mace and holy grail:
Flailed ocean bold and riptide strong,
how dull must these poor currents play;
How drear the river’s gentle song,
how meagre spreads this stream’s buffet:
Pale each the otter,
pike and mink,
laid ‘gainst the monsters of the deep;
Where fate comes slash toothed,
in a blink,
and death itself dares not to sleep:
Thus arrogant they wolven lair,
their palates jade the bounteous brine;
Until the plumpest,
brightest fare,
dares tempt these denizens to dine.

Oh Salmo Trutta; pompous *Peal,
how poor you know the river’s wiles;
How fur and feather,
silk and steel,
each cunning craft the eye beguiles:
Or deep within its hackled wing,
all velvet bodied whipped noose tight;
There lurks unseen an acid sting,
a silver barb’ed lethal bite!
Know you the nought the lissom wrist,
that flicks and loops its silken leash;
That soft as down the surface kissed,
to tempting lay its dread pastiche:
To dance,
upon its master’s whim,
a tantalising roundelay;
And turn and twirl and soar and swim,
to lure you join its dread ballet.

When boastful beast, in prideful flight,
like mercury you flashing strike;
All thrash and foam shown moonlit bright,
as breach you fierce as any Pike:
And in that instant reckless seal,
Hell’s bargain, ‘neath a Cornish moon;
against your life swift, careless Peal,
to cast the reaper’s dice...
Too soon.
To leap and splash your fierce gavot,
as ‘cross that silvered floor you prance;
Each step,
each forced resentful trot,
stings taut the line that bids you dance!
To turn your last,
and slap and spray,
against death’s ballroom’s star shot sky;
‘Til spent and humbled,
banked you lay;
Served false a fickle, steel tailed fly...

© Sullivan the Poet 2010

'Astalk the Peal..' by Sullivan the Poet
from the forthcoming collection 'Bronze Bell Jack..'

*Cornish Goddess of the rivers and streams

*Cornish name for Sea Trout