It's Still Life

Fish Moon

New Year’s Eve means cod. Always has. Alway will. So we head for the harbour. The whole family, and a few who aren’t, squeezing into the old Volvo, always bits of Pop’s job in the back. Trowels rough with mortar, buckets, crusty boots, white overalls. Pop’s a bricky. Bricklayer. Muremand. We race down the lane to catch Marc’s fishing boat just as he ties up. Marc’s a wave of a man, broad, well fed by the looks, he laughs like a sudden crack of thunder, and crashes about like a fish outta water. Pop hands him a large bottle of homemade cider. Marc hands Pop a package nearly as long his arm. Cod for booze is the trade.

At home, Pop unwraps our cod. A high-gloss shine, silvery and smelling of sea. And I’m thinking it’s a moon wrapped in brown paper.

dVerse Prosery. 144 words including the phrase “it is a moon wrapped in brown paper”. Changed (it is) to it’s for the sake of verb tense. Photo from Unsplash, Title: Still life with fish. Institution: Rijksmuseum. Provider: Rijksmuseum. Providing Country: Netherlands. Public Domain (note: muremand is Danish for a bricklayer)  ©Misky 2022 Shared with #amwriting #dVerse_Poets on Twitter