One league I met a Mackerel Shark
I cried out “Hoi! Wow! What a lark!
To meet a full grown Mackerel Shark –
This sailor’s luck has sprung from stark!
What have we here? Twenty fins?
Twenty fins worth twenty spins!
Possessing total twenty fins,
You clearly be rare specimen!”
The Mackerel Shark cut through a wave
And barked, “Hoi! Why art thou knave
With depraved art, who stave the wave
To hunt my twenty fins you crave!
What fates I’ve seen befall my troops
For handsomest fins foul fishermen stoops –
Incapacitate tails despite our frail roops,
Then season them spicy in splendorful soups!”
I gasped, aghast, exclaimed, “Hold fast!
Hast though never tasted rapturous repast
In the fins of your brethren? Come, hurry fast!
I must make you a meal at the mount of the mast.”
The Mackerel Shark, come by curiosity,
Flopped onto my deck, direct docility,
Wriggled towards the kitchen for luminosity
Where sat bowls filled with wizening viscosity.
The Shark’s gluttony unsoundly satiated
By gobbling soup that I so cleverly baited –
As my unambitious plan caught me quite elated,
I tied his tail to mast and caught him elevated.
The Mackerel Shark raised a woeful wail,
“I should have guessed you were after tail!
Yet in throes of carnal hunger, I feel my head grow pale
Because in mental fortitude I finally find fail.”
I hacked with a hatchet, knicked with a knife –
That Shark’s opaque oculi now devoid of strife
Accosted not my hunger welling, so I keep ahold my knife
And finesse-like butchered beauty to lengthen mine own life.
‘Twas an imposing and pretty creature
With twenty fins his finest feature –
Each split and strewn by falsest teacher
For his stew so splendid it would silence a preacher.
If life is pleasing others to please ourselves in simple pleasure,
Where would we go for greater things with mightier mead to measure?
No, pleasure in its filling form would deny me costless leisure
So on I sail for Mackerel Sharks, my modest meager treasure.
Morning's Early Dark 