Poem by Jay Carpenter

​Finishing School
 
Teach a man to fish
And he will eat,
Will stuff his face
Like baked flounder,
Full to bursting
There are so many fish
 
Teach a fish to man,
To sprout stump legs
To slither-crawl
Suck air
To hop-stand-run
To sprout hair
Thumbs
To hunt, wage war
To fish!
And he will consume the planet.
 
His scales will fall like coins,
The cost of transformation
But the scales will never fall from his eyes,
And he will never again feel the fins
That once propelled him
In concert with his brethren
Though skull be widened,
He cannot be trusted
For he is just a fish
And it is unwise to teach
A fish to man.
 
​6 August 2019

• ​​Jay Hall Carpenter (Montgomery County, MD) has been a professional artist for over 40 years, beginning as a sculptor for the Washington National Cathedral, and winning numerous national awards for his work. He has written poetry [Dark and Light, Poetry (2012)], plays, and children’s books throughout his career and now sculpts and writes in Silver Spring, MD.
  

---