Polly Ruffe

Amazing freshwater fish that live in the Fen Drains in East Anglia. As well as elsewhere!

Wide drains in the east fork out to the sea.
Reedy and cool flow league after league.
Fish  live in those waters, short, hard, tough,
Named by the Fenmen the "Dear Polly Ruffe".

Poor Polly Ruffe, a fresh fish devine.
A strange little knot of fins, ribs, and spine.
A spikey curmudgeon with huge huff and puff,
"How am I so ugly? I think well enough!"

In tempers he squiggles in the drain bed's soft mud,
Seeking old vegetation, dead meat,  for his grub.
He stabs at the sticklebacks and grumps at the spawn,
Completely inedible left safely alone.

Not even the fishermen want Polly in net.
The Ruffe hoovers groundbait, maggots and yet!
Dear Polly Ruffe's  achademically bread,
Supreme story teller!  Vastly well read!

Just once a year on Michaelmas night,
(Providing its calm and the moon silver bright,)
The Ruffe will tell stories quite brilliant of thought,
Drain folk flock round when the Ruffe holds his court.

Stories, his stories, so wonderous, unfold.
Of magical rivers wild vikings and gauls,
Of mystical millers, of treasure and ghosts,
The river and sea folk swarm in their hosts.

Eels listen in shoals.  Fish too, stretch for yards,
Yes! Mermaids attend for the Polly Ruffe bard.
Even the tadpoles stay silent and proud,
As the Ruffe's golden voice enraptures the crowd.

Hours glide by, then the Ruffe becomes bored.
Feeling disgust for the dim witted hoard,
He humphs and harrumphs his spine start to flail,
Pierces quite neatly a poor tadpole's tail.

Then there is chaos; the audience flees.
Waters start seething with tails, fins and knees.
A mermaid is quick, with a clever, swift tack,
She plucks out a spine from the Polly Ruffe's back.

"Thats for a tooth pick or a tooth for my comb,"
Then a twist and a flash to her sweet, salty home.
Then the Ruffe, back to normal, grumbles and pouts,
Curses the fish folk now fled north and south.

It is said, if your drainside, on Michaelmas Eve,
And the  moon rays are bright and scarcely a breeze.
Look deep in the waters and concentrate thought,
YOU may catch a glimpse of the Polly Ruffe's Court.

Reviews

[Thurston]

Choice of language! Choice choice of language! Doozey choosing by Ron, in the shoes of the fisherman. His choice of fish is a stinker, hook line and sinker!
But once you discover in this poetic saline soup, a fish as dastardly as Polly Ruffe
(in the Southern Hemisphere known as Orange Roughy) you see the poet's purpose in using "ugly" and "squiggles" together in the same hemisphere. Of salty and sweet, this is not contradiction, it is a diction contrast. Ron is clearly a poet going to the bottom of the sea, very quicksilverly, very slick, very tadpole.
Quite unreadably magnificent if you are a cod lover. But that is another poem by Ron.

[little mermaid]

Ron that is such fun! I loved it. What a curmudgeonly fish. I know him so well!