poetry writing challenge - day 22

For today's prompt, I want you to write a work-related poem. Work doesn't have to be the main feature of the poem, but I want you to "work" it in somehow.
















Painter/Hunter

Our job was to separate the cuttlefish
from the sharp rocks they clung to.
They were visible just in front of us, but they clung fiercely.
If you could just get your fingernails under their edges,
it was told, you could detach them
and, if you survived the wave
and for a month said nothing
there would be food, somehow, then for everyone.

The water was only two feet deep and more than perfectly clear:
it magnified the fins, the veins, the insides of the fish,
the fish inside that fish, and another, still, for later.

When we came to the bay to work we stepped right on them.
We cut our feet on their fins, on their veins,
on the sharp toothed stones and we bled into the water for awhile.

We settled into the water and floated above them, paddling our feet
for balance in the current.
The salt water healed our wounds and stopped our bleeding
and the current cleared our vision.
Our eyes were sharp, our nails long, our reflexes - quick.

As the water drew back, if we could just get our fingernails underneath,
then pull back, the sea could give us leverage - the cuttlefish
would release in our hand
and if we were not greedy but humble in our hunting
there would be food, somehow, then for everyone
and love and life and fish
and love
and fish inside of fish.

The day I died I was punished.
I had my fingernails - of both hands -
well under the sharp, razor edge of a one.
It held on tightly to the black and shiny rock.
The regular current pulled back and me with it.
The fish lifted half away and I heard
one chord of 40,000 years of singing.

I let go and stood and shouted out to anyone who could hear me
"It's music! The fish - it's held by music!"

and the sea sent a wave horizontally - right at me.
faster than I've ever dreamt or seen or known of
and it obliterated me and so I died - learning then
my work was just to hunt, just to paint of the hunt,
to never stand and proudly shout,
to never holler out the names and secrets
of sacred things.