No Fishing (Poetry)

There can be few more pleasant ways
to spend warm afternoons,
than cruising calm, uncluttered bays
or languid, green lagoons;

dangling one unstockinged foot
within the water’s cool
refreshing currents; idly put
a hand into the pool

to tickle trout — a lazy shoal
through trailing fingers slide,
sluggish in the tide’s control
and misidentified.

Not fish, but sewage drifting past
in raw, untreated state,
with schools of coloured condoms cast
like eels whose skins inflate

as ripples make them bob and churn,
uneasy in our wake,
and rising, noisome smells confirm
the poisonous mistake.

A floating mass of human waste,
defiling as it flows —
Man’s eco-friendly cant displaced
by noxious undertows —

the stink of cities flushed away,
discharged along the coast,
to foul a boating holiday
and pen a card to post:

Dear folks, the weather here is fine,
it’s scenic, I’ll admit,
but candour rules the bottom line —
the fishing’s really shit!