a small fish

A Little Fish I opened a tin of sardines in olive oil for my evening meal. Headless and nicely packed they were, except for one that had a head-on was alive. I filled water in a jar. Put the sardine in and fed it bread crumbs. The headless sardines in the tin, so still and dead, I could not eat them, put the tin back in the fridge.   My little sardine grew too big for the jar, and cats were circling The house, looking for a way in, so I took it to the empty lake that once had Bluegills fished to extinction, set my sardine free to feed on rotten vegetation- I don`t know how fish reproduce, but a year later, a school of sardines were swimming around, except for one that swam the opposite way- Bonanza! Grilled sardines and The people rejoiced, thinking it was going to last forever, And then there were none except one, my sardine in oil.                  I went down to the lake when the sardine saw me was glad, jumped up in the air, and was caught by a bird. Empty lake, a dead eye in the wilderness, tells no story.