Not that I ever have swam in the sea or been on a beach where sharks are prevalent, but the idea is visibly planted following that iconic film.
I thought that not swimming in obvious places would protect me from the predator shark, but I was wrong.
Sharks can turn up in unlikely places where you don’t expect them. I worked for two years for an organisation where a shark was circling in our midst. He was a predator who would stop at nothing to get what he wanted. He would exaggerate the amount of work he did and try to belittle the work of others. He would try and bully colleagues with his size and seniority; he would dominate conversations during team meetings in the hope that the loudest and most constant voice would be heard above others.
Then over the years I have been involved with many community projects, often from churches. These community focused groups offer support to people in need. One of the biggest needs is that some people are in debt and can’t find a way out of it. Sometimes the reason people have a large debt is because they have been ‘loaned’ money by so called loan sharks who prey on people in need, offering small loans and then charging huge interest and demanding with menaces repayment immediately.
Shark
She found a shark in the fish tank
only 45cm long but enormous
in the 60 cm aquarium
this was a problem
a tank for tropical freshwater
fish and the shark is marine
a couple of spoons of salt
probably wouldn’t help
and what species was the intruder
if from the colder northern waters
then she could turn the heater off
but it’s hard to tell if a shark is hot
she hasn’t asked what it was doing
in the tank as it’s not the ones
you see you have to worry about.
Thank you for reading and stay safe from the predator,
David Wilkinson.
4 comments:
Very good David. I've never seen the film and don't intend to, but then I don't swim either. I'm about to start researching for my own shark blog so will suspend judgement on whether the shark merits having become the metaphor for rapacious capitalists and predatory human beings until I've read a bit about them.
What I do know already is that there are some 440 different types, so the lady in your poem would be advised to flick through her Big Book Of Sharks to identify the interloper (how did it get there?) and how to deal with it.
Perhaps we should all have a Big Book Of Sharks ;-)
Fintastic!
That's an intriguing poem.
I've just listened to a BBC World Service Outlook documentary on a man in Florida who has spent decades swimming with Tiger ( ? ) sharks. They are his friends and they come to him for help getting rid of hooks in their mouths or just for a cuddle. Astonishing story.
I've swam with basking sharks off Peel in the Isle of Man. Their skin is like sandpaper.
An intriguing poem as always from David.
Post a Comment