They were gone first one night, then two nights, then three.
Every night at the table sat just Mommy and me.
At last he came home with one fish in his rig.
It was a small one, but the kind that used to be big.

“I threw my hooks and my lines, all that could be thrown,
to find this one small fish, swimming alone.”
He pointed to the cooler and we all looked inside
to see the one small fish swimming, still alive.
“I don't want to eat her,” Daddy said next.
“She might be the last fish that I ever catch.”

He put an arm around Mommy and one around me
and said, “Soon there will be no fish in the sea.
A sea without fish is no sea at all.
It's just water and darkness and small things that crawl.
It's like a tree with no leaves or the sky with no sun,
like a man with no family, like a dog that can't run.”

“It makes me sad,” Mommy sighed. “Me too,” Daddy replied.
I didn’t say anything. I just cried.

The fishermen meet every fourth Saturday.
A fisher stands at the front if he has something to say.
Daddy had something to say, all right.
He wrote out his comments and practiced Friday night.