Eel Ghazal

I was delighted to win the Wigtown Poetry Competition (Main Prize) with Eel Ghazal in October 2012.


A brown eel caught itself on a casually thrown hook,
Anguilla anguilla where are all the marshland glass wrigglers?

weir and dam,net trap and poison you slithery boy
as tricky as a spiv closing in on the next deal.

Brown fen lurker,yellow canal threader,green mud swimmer,
an elusive thought slipping in and out like a rumour.

Surreptitiously you respond to an ancient voice,
the Sargasso pulling you back into its mysterious stillness.

Only your offspring return,catching the current -
eel breed,eel feed for all your lives, for all of your long dark lives.


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