{"id":641,"date":"2026-07-13T10:59:41","date_gmt":"2026-07-13T14:59:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peacotoons.com\/?page_id=641"},"modified":"2026-07-13T10:59:41","modified_gmt":"2026-07-13T14:59:41","slug":"the-bones-of-the-fish","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/peacotoons.com\/?page_id=641","title":{"rendered":"The Bones of the Fish"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>The Bones of the Fish<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The bones of the fish lie on the shore,<\/p>\n<p>cast up by an errant wave upon<\/p>\n<p>the unquiet sands, to join countless<\/p>\n<p>other relics of barnacle, clam, crab:<\/p>\n<p>brief flickers of life forever passed.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>To walk along this strand<\/p>\n<p>is to wander in a graveyard:<\/p>\n<p>shells, claws, drying fronds of kelp,<\/p>\n<p>the ghosts of whales long past their agonies.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>And sometimes, like a benediction,<\/p>\n<p>the boundaries between fleeting<\/p>\n<p>existence and ever-present death<\/p>\n<p>dissolve and in their place a mosaic:<\/p>\n<p>the submission of life to time.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The bones of the fish rest on the shore.<\/p>\n<p>Webbed with sand and salt, even the head<\/p>\n<p>remains, pared down to skull and teeth,<\/p>\n<p>an awful visage, perhaps, yet in its way<\/p>\n<p>beautiful: an unexpected grace glimpsed<\/p>\n<p>in the essence of something offered up<\/p>\n<p>still claiming its own small measure of space<\/p>\n<p>while above in the living air<\/p>\n<p>gulls wheel and wail and sing.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&#8212;<em>Peaco Todd<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Bones of the Fish &nbsp; The bones of the fish lie on the shore, cast up by an errant<span class=\"read-more\">[&hellip;]<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"spay_email":"","footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-641","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v18.4.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The Bones of the Fish - Peacotoons<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/peacotoons.com\/?page_id=641\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Bones of the Fish - Peacotoons\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The Bones of the Fish &nbsp; 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I\u2019m proud to have my work recognized among this talented group of poets. That poem and some other favorites are posted below \u2013\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":638,"url":"https:\/\/peacotoons.com\/?page_id=638","url_meta":{"origin":641,"position":1},"title":"Summer Haiku","date":"July 13, 2026","format":false,"excerpt":"Summer Haiku 2019: Duxbury Beach, Standish Shore, Lake Chocorua \u00a0 \u00a0 Dead gull, white as bone, dancing past, a plover chick -- not a wave pauses. \u00a0 Sea, color of moss \u2013 in the shallows an egret blazing blazing white. \u00a0 A horseshoe crab swims into a pool of sunlight\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peacotoons.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/641","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peacotoons.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peacotoons.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peacotoons.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peacotoons.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=641"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/peacotoons.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/641\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":643,"href":"https:\/\/peacotoons.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/641\/revisions\/643"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peacotoons.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}