The Marlin’s Eye

The Marlin’s Eye




The powerful fish was not diving, peeling line, or running.
The lean ex-soldier too was exceptionally strong and cunning.
Lee Marvin had survived a Japanese bullet to his backside.
After sixty cheek-to-cheek stitches, “back to my platoon” he demanded to ride.
Being a famous Hollywood star and leading actor
Was truly not this rugged man’s life-defining factor.
Although he’d achieved fame, wealth, and more,
He could never move past the Pacific’s dreadful war.
Strapped in swivel chair, shirtless and bronzed, he sat
Furiously fighting a marlin as if in Saipan’s horrific combat.
The colossal fish, now angered, potent, and mean,
Had the bad luck of tangling with a hardened ex-marine.
Lee’s muscles cramped and burned, his blood so boiling hot,
Searing pain not felt since being gravely shot.
Grueling stalemate ensued between angler and Neptune’s beast;
Amid old echoes of wounded comrades, stardom mattered least.
Like gunfire erupting from a long-ago camouflaged lair,
The gleaming fish broke the struggle, soaring atop waves and into air.
The released strain on Lee’s body fiercely jerked it back,
Ending torturous tension, sturdy line curling slack.
The creature was freed from his hunter’s perilous grip
Though cast razor barbs found live marlin flesh to rip.
The boat’s skipper looked toward Lee in stunned disbelief
As the record catch swam to safety in the Great Barrier Reef.
Lee grunted, shook his head, and sauntered off for a beer;
The boat became silent, no more tension of fight and fear.
Three blistering hours of tug and torment laid Lee fast asleep.
Marines don’t complain; they hunker down and don’t outwardly weep.
Sun-dreamt visions of countless friends he saw fatally fall,
Then was awakened by shouting; the crewmen tell all:
“Go back to the cooler; open up its cover and look under.”
From Lee’s war-haunted soul shot a baritone cry like thunder.
On packed, glistening ice, Lee’s sleepy gaze saw lie
The big hook through a jagged hole of the monster’s ghostly eye.
As his dreams had bounced ’round war-scorched islands of his past,
The mates had reeled in frayed line, finding marlin eye to hook held fast.
At the grisly sight he stared; then from deep sea whispered an eerie voice:
My eyeball or my life, old marine, this was my only choice.