I had a dream

that fish could scream.

So there were no fishermen

for none could bear to hear

the screams of netted fish

or tolerate the painful cries

of those impaled on fishing lines.

What god gave silence to the fish

that we might never hear nor feel

their fear and pain,

just so we can eat them

with no twinge of shame

or fellow-feeling?

We might ask what kind

of God would do this

to make all fish mute

and in their silence,

suffer suffocation in our trawler nets,

pain and terror on our hooks?

Perhaps that we might learn

to feel through silence

for the mute, the weak, the dumb,

of our kind and fish kind

and all kind great and small.