On the Poaching of Cod

To Terry of Moreton's Harbour now that the moratorium is over Small blue slips are but bits of history blowing in the wind as far back as 1989, company receipts that he unfolds and smoothes on jeans pressed clean denim once oiled, dingy, stinkin' of cod livers. Suddenly I see them littered everywhere flapping in the wind split along silver lines like the scatter of coins in stilled piles down by drowned antlers of forbidden caribou, near the wharf pilings, skull and whale bones. This one reads August 7th 1990 found among rocks where we climbed and the ants bite some savage my son shaded by the sign we ignore: forbidden all access to the wharf Local Fishing Commission. All hands on deck. I admired the wake of his white wooden dory, floating like an old song with its bottoms awash my son grinning with PFD, my husband who can’t swim bravely without, both hands bailing a Clorox bottle, protected by holes of impunity. "They won’t take this boat." he jigs depleting stock whose tongues to taste are a delicacy as illegal as is hospitality these days he points at the water our eyes like his daughter's newborn blind, she fights for life, gone with his wife to Gander again. We can see no silver until they sliver with every pull of the jigger, flapping tails on our feet they fight for life up from the sea too many to count out beyond the boat as many as the stars We see and we believe. All is not lost at sea. safe on shore he unlocks the government store of squid jiggers, tentacles cruelly entwined turned up sharply with large jigs and long lines outlawed late 70's along with the gaff DFO regulation. We asked him when cod was last brought in he sifted through waves of drifting debris finds that slip written 92 blue before the dusky sky the final lesson of the day delivered by a fisherman more eloquent than an orator more divining than a prophet. Written January 25th, 2002 © on Jan 25 2002 02:51 AM PST   0 • 9