Mackerel

the sea gave up
its shadow makers,
the clumped groups
of darting silver and stripes.

their contours of skin
slip surface tones
like crumpled foil
holding Nova Scotia light.

arranged head by tail
they do not lose tints
that invented them–
why God created color.

the painter has made us
want to touch exposed
flesh, until we feel
the cold from existing depths.

that sea, being older
than us, held them fast
until they found the net
and were hauled up alive

into a different world,
the one we thought we knew.