The Catch : Poetry Everywhere : Video : The Poetry Foundation

The Catch : Poetry Everywhere : Video : The Poetry Foundation >

This is one of my favorite poems by Stallings. There are many, many more.  Archaic Smile is the book I chose to have the class read for my senior poetry workshop course in college.  A.E. Stallings inspires me to try to write formal poetry. I think this video really does justice to the poem.
 

                    The Catch 

Something has come between us— 

It will not sleep. 

Every night it rises like a fish 

Out of the deep. 

 

It cries with a human voice,  

It aches to be fed. 

Every night we heave it weeping 

Into our bed, 

 

With its heavy head lolled back,

Its limbs hanging down,

Like a mer-creature fetched up

From the weeds of the drowned. 

 

Damp in the tidal dark, it whimpers, 

Tossing the cover, 

Separating husband from wife, 

Lover from lover. 

 

It settles in the interstice, 

It spreads out its arms, 

While its cool underwater face 

Sharpens and warms: 

 

This is the third thing that makes 

Father and mother, 

The fierce love of our fashioning 

That will have no brother. 

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/50785/the-catch-56d22e1c401d2