Beneath a Great Lake’s breadth,
the lake perch prowls,
its scales a flash of golden sheen,
a silken shimmer between rock and reed.
It moves like a whisper,
a dart of yellow amid ink-dark depths,
touched by the secrets the waters hold
in their cool, profound embrace.
The waters speak in waves,
and the perch listens
to the call of the river, the push of the wind,
the arc of the sun’s reach over cold stone.
It is both hunter and the hunted,
finding home in tangled beds of weeds,
sliding through the dark to feed,
then back to the depths where it belongs.
And then alas,
it encounters the world of man,
stopped short by nets or hooks
for the cook’s clever craft.
Steamed, fried, baked—
its delicate flesh, tender and sweet,
is served on the plates or fine china
of a restaurant table.
© 1975, Kenneth Koziol. All rights reserved.
