Short Poems on Fish

Fish don't always lend themselves to poetic potential, but several famous poems on fishing and fish have been produced anyway. The following 10 poems are among the best fish poems in the English language, ranging from religious instructional verse to religious satire, ecological poems, and self-portrait poems.

Let us learn some amazing small fish poems from this article.

Small Fish Poems

Let us look at some of the interesting poems on fish.

A Small Fish

1. The Fish

I caught a tremendous fish

and held him beside the boat

half out of water, with my hook

fast in a corner of his mouth.

He didn't fight.

He hadn't fought at all.

He hung a grunting weight,

battered and venerable

and homely. Here and there

his brown skin hung in strips

like ancient wallpaper,

and its pattern of darker brown

was like wallpaper:

shapes like full-blown roses

stained and lost through age.

He was speckled with barnacles,

fine rosettes of lime,

and infested

with tiny white sea-lice,

and underneath two or three

rags of green weed hung down.

While his gills were breathing in

the terrible oxygen

- the frightening gills,

fresh and crisp with blood,

that can cut so badly-

I thought of the coarse white flesh

packed in like feathers,

the big bones and the little bones,

the dramatic reds and blacks

of his shiny entrails,

and the pink swim-bladder

like a big peony.

I looked into his eyes

which were far larger than mine

but shallower, and yellowed,

the irises backed and packed

with tarnished tinfoil

seen through the lenses

of old scratched isinglass.

They shifted a little, but not

to return my stare.

- It was more like the tipping

of an object toward the light.

I admired his sullen face,

the mechanism of his jaw,

and then I saw

that from his lower lip

- if you could call it a lip

grim, wet, and weaponlike,

hung five old pieces of fish-line,

or four and a wire leader

with the swivel still attached,

with all their five big hooks

grown firmly in his mouth.

A green line, frayed at the end

where he broke it, two heavier lines,

and a fine black thread

still crimped from the strain and snap

when it broke and he got away.

Like medals with their ribbons

frayed and wavering,

a five-haired beard of wisdom

trailing from his aching jaw.

I stared and stared

and victory filled up

the little rented boat,

from the pool of bilge

where oil had spread a rainbow

around the rusted engine

to the bailer rusted orange,

the sun-cracked thwarts,

the oarlocks on their strings,

the gunnels- until everything

was rainbow, rainbow, rainbow!

And I let the fish go.

-  Elizabeth Bishop

Synopsis

A fisherman explains the bravery of the fish when he hunted it and how he let it go after catching the fish. He admired seeing the fish because it did not fight even after getting caught.

2. Enigmas

You've asked me what the lobster is weaving there with

his golden feet?

I reply, the ocean knows this.

You say, what is the ascidia waiting for in its transparent

bell? What is it waiting for?

I tell you it is waiting for time, like you.

You ask me whom the Macrocystis alga hugs in its arms?

Study, study it, at a certain hour, in a certain sea I know.

You question me about the wicked tusk of the narwhal,

and I reply by describing

how the sea unicorn with the harpoon in it dies.

You enquire about the kingfisher's feathers,

which tremble in the pure springs of the southern tides?

Or you've found in the cards a new question touching on

the crystal architecture

of the sea anemone, and you'll deal that to me now?

You want to understand the electric nature of the ocean

spines?

The armored stalactite that breaks as it walks?

The hook of the angler fish, the music stretched out

in the deep places like a thread in the water?

I want to tell you the ocean knows this, that life in its

jewel boxes

is endless as the sand, impossible to count, pure,

and among the blood-colored grapes time has made the

petal

hard and shiny, made the jellyfish full of light

and untied its knot, letting its musical threads fall

from a horn of plenty made of infinite mother-of-pearl.

I am nothing but the empty net which has gone on ahead

of human eyes, dead in those darknesses,

of fingers accustomed to the triangle, longitudes

on the timid globe of an orange.

I walked around as you do, investigating

the endless star,

and in my net, during the night, I woke up naked,

the only thing caught, a fish trapped inside the wind.

                                  - Pablo Neruda

Synopsis

Here, the writer explains the beauty of the ocean with fish and how he had spent his time at night near the ocean.

3. Cat Fish Philosophy

There is a moustachioed animal that lives in water

His appearance seems funny but gives a frightening impression

It's still a fish

Life in its harsh habitat forges it into a strong and tough fish

The cat fish with its ugly appearance wanders into a river until it enters a muddy area with little water

There was found a lot of food trapped in it

The cat fish is happily happy even though the scorching heat has drowned its body and all that's left is its head

He prayed to God so that he could give rain accompanied by a fish, namely a snakehead fish

                          - Ayatullah Nurjati

Synopsis

In this poem, the poet describes the funny appearance of the catfish which he refers to as “a moustachioed animal” and its living conditions. The catfish ventures into a shallow water muddy area in search of food. It finds itself getting buried in mud due to the scorching heat of the Sun and prays to God for rain and a snakehead fish.