012821c

 

Select 100% terran tuna, certified vat-grown on the home world before the Incident, and cryoshipped directly to the Capital ahead of the wavefront.

101120d

 

Leviathan started life in a pet-store aquarium. After she ate a half dozen of the other young fish, she was moved to the adult tank. That was Friday. Monday morning she was alone with the rock and plastic plants. The clerk didn't say a word when Josiah picked her out after lunch. Three weeks later, after outgrowing two tanks and eating a beloved turtle, Levie was dumped into Broken Leg Creek a few minutes before midnight. The rest is history, and it's why we now live just outside Colorado Springs.

070320b

skillet

you could leap from water

what about grease?

050520d

The fish king wasn't afraid of anything. However, as a precautionary matter, he banned all hooks from the pond. Too bad he had never heard of dynamite.

041720

Given the amazing ability of the octopus,
to change its colors,
to hide in plain sight,
when all of the fish are gone,
when the land is brown,
and the last whale has been eaten,
how will we know
whether octopi have gone, too?

In the streets of New York,
under 80 feet of water,
mailboxes and fire hydrants
may get up and walk about,
prying open cans of tuna,
to get the very last fish.

030320d

Green River Shale
Eocene waves still crash
over these fish

022520b

Undichna, a trace fossil made by a fish swimming in water so shallow that its ventral fans cut grooves in the mud. Indicates the former presence of a tide pool on a  Pennsylvanian mud flat in Walker County Alabama, 313 million years ago. Collected by Prescott Atkinson. More information here: https://www.alabamapaleosoc.org/

020620c

Old Faithful
shoots water and "fish" each day
Io delicacy

110419d

Spectral Fish

Caught bare-handed

at midnight,

full moon so bright

they roast in its light;

sweet taste of rivers

that perished long ago,

when this land was green,

when birdsong echoed from the frees;

such fish ran those streams!

This one swallowed a golden ring,

its spirit shivers down my spine.

Invisible,

I cast my line

reel in fish after fish.

At sunrise I wake

on a grassy bank,

around me birds

are calling:

they are singing,

what’s this here?

091519c

thousand-year carp
drifts up and opens wide
two kids run screaming

081619b

bigger fish
schooling is eschewed
by the top sharks

080819d

The Encyclopedia of Alabama includes about two dozen short articles about the geology of the state. Including this one, about the Steven C Minkin Paleozoic Footprint site, in Walker County. This site is one of the best in the world for its abundance and diversity of trace fossils:

http://www.encyclopediaofalabama.org/article/h-1371

The encyclopedia is written for the general public.

Here are photographs of some of the fantastically preserved trace fossils found at the site:

 Insect jumping traces.

Horseshoe crab trackway.

Two crossing millipede trackways.

 Amphibian trackway.

Reptile trackway.

Giant amphibian footprint next to a small trackway of a different amphibian.

 Fish fin trails.

Insect wing impressions.

Trigonotarbid, an ancient spider relative.

A new book about these exciting Pennsylvanian trace fossils describes their discovery, their makers, and the environment in which they lived:

https://www.amazon.com/Footprints-Stone-Fossil-Coal-Age-Tetrapods/dp/0817358447/ref=mt_paperback?_encoding=UTF8&me=

061419b

catch of the day
from Triton's methane lakes
natural flambe'

060719b

This planet's only environment
hospitable to humans
within these giant fish
it's not so bad
you get used to the smell
and the internal parasites
some of which make good eating
but when these fish are caught
and slit open
well
that's the end
for any oxygen breathers
who might be inside

On the plus side
when they spawn
we can colonize
thousands of eggs all at once
soon there will be many more of us
living here
than on what's left of the home world

121618b

dry seabed
of northern Mars
fish now dust

121318

The Problem of Were

Where the giant fish

Dress like men and women outdoors

But shuck their clothes

In their homes

We had to write new laws

Even though they don't have

External genitals,

But those iridescent scales!

If you know what to look for

You can tell from the scales

What they look like

In the wereman or werewoman form

So it's almost like

In the fish form

They are naked humans

At least that's what the state legislature

In its infinite wisdom

Has decreed.

It is a fine legal point:

If you kill them in person form

They revert to fish

Then you may decide to eat them.

Have you committed murder?

Are you a cannibal?

The legislature is still out on that one.

120918c

plastic fish moves

a trillion flakes embedded

microbial gel sparks and flashes

the neural net learns

from every creature it consumes

dreaming of leviathan

110918

plastic motes
colonized by bacteria
stick to one another

united they think
become plastic fish
congregate at river mouths
sources of plastic bonanzas
soon plastic sharks evolve
then leviathan
thar she blows

110518c

It was the little thugs who discovered
that the native fish should not be swallowed alive,
they found the human digestive tract
a wonderful place to live,
food was everywhere around them!

101518b

Like the fish that evolved there
genetically modified humans
who prospect the deep-sea
have very few bones
and can't live near the surface
only their fingernails are hard