The rain ended this morning at 7:30, just as I woke to Daniel gently shaking me. I was up late last night (early this morning) reading poetry and writing critiques on the new private poetry forum I’ve started. We’re a small group, which is how I would like to keep it. I had become frustrated with the submission process for both online and print poetry journals. It’s a 50\/50 split between the editors for these journals as to whether a poem is considered published or not if it has been posted on the Poets org Workshop Forum. Since I own several website domains, I decided to use the “free” software that comes as a “bonus” to the sites through my domain host. I started the forum three weeks ago and spent two weeks learning the software while I made a few test posts. Last Thursday I began to send out invitations in the hopes of forming a cohesive group that would work well together. We’ve been going strong now just over a week and I’m optimistic that some good poetry will come out of it.<\/p>\n
I went out to the pond with my first cup of coffee in hand to check on fish. She was up and moving around slowly, but swimming upright and didn’t seem to be in any distress. This gave me hope. I spend the majority of the day between reading and critiquing poems between both poetry forums. Intermittently I checked on fish and took more photos of the pond, dragonflies and a frog.<\/p>\n
In the afternoon fish didn’t look so good and she was swimming erratically. When I went out at 5:30 this afternoon to get the mail, I heard a loud splash. She was jumped high in the air, landing with a splash each time that sent large ripples through the pond. By the time I got to the pond, she was on her side gasping her last breaths. I took the mail into the house and returned to net her out, but she was nowhere in sight. I returned every so often to look for her, but by nightfall there was still no sight of her. I’m certain she’s dead and lying on the bottom of the pond. The water is slightly green right now so I can’t see beyond about two feet deep. I have a large section of bird control netting over the pond to keep the fish in and the blue heron out, so it’s very difficult to reach a net into the deepest part. If I don’t see any sign of her tomorrow, I’ll have to pull back the net and prod the bottom until I find her body. I can’t leave her in because she’ll start to decompose and that can affect the other fish. All evening the other fish were acting strangely. It’s like they know she’s gone. She’s one of the biggest fish in there at about twenty or so inches. I have only one other larger fish, a female who’s two feet long.<\/p>\n
I’ll bury her in Daniel’s garden.<\/p>\n
O.P.W.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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