Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, SEA BUTTERFLIES, by DON BLANDING


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

SEA BUTTERFLIES, by                    
First Line: Gay little fishes with painted scales
Last Line: Long may you wave your chiffon tails.


Gay little fishes with painted scales,
Gossamer fins and chiffon tails,
Spattered with jewel dust, stained with dyes,
Gems of jade and jet for eyes.

Striped with orange and smeared with blue,
Dipped in the rainbow's every hue.
Little ones, yellow as buttercups,
Big ones, ugly as gutter-pups,
Fat ones, bloated and marked like toads,
Squatted by submarine forest roads.

Fishes gilded with guinea-gold,
Shaped like mythical beasts of old,
Some are enamelled like cloisonne,
Lacquered and penciled with colors gay.
'Broidered and traced like a Persian shawl.
Fishes that swim and fishes that crawl,
Splotched and daubed in a cubist scheme,
Some are born of a mad man's dream.
Fishes with whiskers and fishes with horns
Just like the fabulous unicorn's.
Colors that burn like a funeral pyre,
Colors as pale as a moonstone's fire,
Ochre and amethyst, ultramarine,
Amber, umber and macaw green,
Fragments of fancy, living a day,
Going their curious deep-sea way.

Gay little fishes with painted scales
Long may you wave your chiffon tails.





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