Buddha Fish Poem by Bernard Henrie

Fish flip as though writing calligraphy.
Buoyed by currents they levitate,
eerie like a body in a receiving room
or statuary in a closed museum.

Their gills move with economy
in the featureless water of fountains
and tanks, water no different to them
than the Black Sea.

They are fish Buddha. Their reclusion
is not possible to express in words.
Their capacity for vast indifference
is thrilling. Date and time cleanly erased.

Like our own, their insouciant hearts
strike idly in moody pools slack and damp.
In their scornful serenity they float
know nothing and have nothing to forget.