Flying Fish
Flying Fish - meaning Summary
Between Sea and Sky
The poem observes a flying fish as a creature trading between water and air and uses that image to explore liminality. The speaker watches its brief, awkward flights and identifies with its in-between existence, calling it both "child of water" and "child of air." The tone is quietly empathetic; the fish’s motion becomes a metaphor for living between worlds and recognizing a kinship with other unsettled or transitional states of being.
Read Complete AnalysesI HAVE lived in many half-worlds myself ... and so I know you. I leaned at a deck rail watching a monotonous sea, the same circling birds and the same plunge of furrows carved by the plowing keel. I leaned so ... and you fluttered struggling between two waves in the air now ... and then under the water and out again ... a fish ... a bird ... a fin thing ... a wing thing. Child of water, child of air, fin thing and wing thing ... I have lived in many half worlds myself ... and so I know you.
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