But it all started changing, not right away,
just a little something different each day in the bay.
“There's a new kind of boat,” Daddy said, “made of steel.
Ten men work the deck, another stands at the wheel.
Every time I catch one fish, that boat catches twenty.
They sell all those fish and make lots of money.”

At first it was one boat, then hundreds, then more.
When we walked by the bay we could not see the shore.
It used to be few boats, here a dot, there a dot.
But slowly the bay became a boat parking lot.

Then Daddy came home one night in July.
His face looked so different I wanted to cry.
“Don't make a wish,” he said, his voice low and blue.
“I know what you'll wish but I can't make it come true.
Darling worked hard and your daddy tried, too,
but tonight, little Baby, I've no fish for you.”

“No fish?” I cried. “How can that be?
I thought there were billions of fish in the sea.
Their colors of blue, yellow, violet, and green,
with big ones for Mommy and small ones for me.
Even Granddaddy says there are more fish than we see.
That's why you throw hooks by two hundred or three.”

Daddy put a hand on the back of my head.
“I know what you mean and what Granddaddy said.
But if millions of people throw hundreds of hooks,
then someday we'll have taken all to be took.
It might be just here, it's too soon to say.
So tomorrow I'll take Darling far outside the bay.”

The next day they went farther than ever before,
but that night, with no fish, he walked in the door.
Mommy cooked his favorite vegetables and whistled a song.
She tried to help him forget that something was wrong.
He said he would not come home the next day
because he and Darling must go farther away.