Jemma Borg
Watching the fisherman at night, Tung Chung
No longer water only, but the idea of it.
In darkness, a needlework of currents
on which the fisherman floats, his light
fingerprinting the sea’s black, cold weight:
bands of glimmering, thin rectangles
of shivering surface
puckered with the mouths of crystalline fish.
The shining crosses the bay and enters
my eye and does not end there
but descends
like the fisherman’s line from the boat’s prow
into the sliding clarity and stutter
of water.
I’m here in this room, fishing.
Here, in this room, I’m the white peaks of fish
then the dull rainclouds of their eyes
as they flutter up in the air
among apparitions of diamonds.
I’m not myself, but consistent with this burning.
I only know it as a feeling,
before it drops me.
But I’ve been a fisherman and a fish.