Ode to the Fish
Nights when I can’t sleep, I listen to the sea lions
barking from the rocks off the lighthouse.
I look out the black window into the black night
and think about fish stirring the oceans.
Muscular tuna, their lunge and thrash
churning the water, whipping up a squall,
storm of hunger. Herring cruising,
river of silver in the sea, wide as a lit city.
And all the small breaths: pulse
of frilled jellyfish, thrust of squid,
frenzy of krill, transparent skin glowing
green with the glass shells of diatoms.
Billions swarming up the water column each night,
gliding down at dawn. They’re the greased motor
that powers the world. Shipping heat
to the arctic, hauling cold to the tropics,
currents unspooling around the globe.
My room is so still, the bureau lifeless,
and on it, inert, the paraphernalia of humans:
keys, coins, shells that once rocked in the tides—
opalescent abalone, pearl earrings.
Only the clock’s sea-green numerals
register small changes. And shadows
the moon casts—fan of maple branches—
tick across the room. But beyond the cliffs
a blue whale sounds and surfaces, cosmic
ladle scooping the icy depths. An artery so wide,
I could swim through into its thousand-pound heart.
This poem is excerpted from The Gift of Animals: Poems of Love, Loss, and Connection (Storey Publishing, 2025), edited by Alison Hawthorne Deming, a unique collection of poems from diverse contemporary voices that offers a range of perspectives on humans’ complex relationship with animals, celebrating and bearing witness to the lives of animals both wild and domestic.
This is the fourth of four poems from the anthology (plus our podcast) reprinted in Terrain.org over the second week of November 2025.
“Ode to the Fish” was first published in Like a Beggar, reprinted with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC, on behalf of Copper Canyon Press, coppercanyonpress.org.
Ellen Bass’s most recent poetry collection is Indigo. Among her awards are fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the NEA, the Lambda Literary Award, and four Pushcart Prizes. She co-edited the first major anthology of women’s poetry, No More Masks!, and co-authored the groundbreaking The Courage to Heal. A Chancellor Emerita of the Academy of American Poets, Bass founded poetry workshops at Salinas Valley State Prison and the Santa Cruz jails, and teaches in Pacific University’s MFA program. She offers online Living Room Craft Talks at ellenbass.com.
Read three poems by Ellen Bass appearing in Terrain.org, plus Elizabeth Jacobson’s interview with Ellen Bass, “Rich Territory.”
Header photo by jamesteohart, courtesy Shutterstock. Photo of Ellen Bass by Irene Young.
