NaPoWriMo #4

Saturday, so I am able to spend a little more time on my NaPoWriMo efforts, though I still consider them very much rough drafts. The prompt for the day, over at Readwritepoem, was "three in a row". I was looking through old photos for another purpose altogether, when I spotted these three stone fish which adorn the fountain in the pump room in Bath. Actually, there are four stone fish - one is on the other side of the fountain, almost out of sight. That seems appropriate, because it is the third day of NaPoWriMo in the United States, but it's the fourth day of April here. It really doesn't matter too much in this poem whether you read "four stone fish" or "three stone fish". Consider them interchangeable.



Three stone fish out of water
adorn the flaking fountain's rim
around the urn. Caught forever
gape mouthed, mineral encrusted
they catch the flow from gushing spigots.
"The King's Spring". Many have come
besides the royal retinue to take the waters
"for health's sake". Cuprous waters,
ferrous waters, warm and brackish,
unpalatable, water through fish.

Quicken, fish, flip away,
spurn the long-dead king
claim the river, nearby Avon,
slip into its fresh waters
fish through water, fish made flesh.