Larry Schug
Fish Out of Water
Twenty-seven years ago,
my brother, on his death bed,
breathing like a caught fish on the floor of a boat,
I advised him that it would be alright
for him to just let go of air,
shed the pain of breathing.
Who knows,
there may just be an ocean on the other side
where some god might dislodge the hook
that lifted us into the certain death of breath,
that we might be able to swim free once more,
perhaps in another womb.
Bio
Larry Schug is retired after a working life of various types of physical labor. For the past eleven years he has been a volunteer writing tutor at the College of St. Benedict. He lives with his artistic wife and cat (not so artistic) beside a forever preserved large tamarack bog in St. Wendel Twp, Minnesota.