The Pike

In the brown water,

Thick and silver-sheened in the sunshine,

Liquid and cool in the shade of the reeds,

A pike dozed.

Lost among the shadows of stems

He lay unnoticed.

Suddenly he flicked his tail,

And a green-and-copper brightness

Ran under the water.

Out from under the reeds

Came the olive-green light,

And orange flashed up

Through the sun-thickened water.

So the fish passed across the pool,

Green and copper,

A darkness and a gleam,

And the blurred reflections of the willows on the opposite bank

Received it.