Poem Paraphrase

I'm chosing to paraphrase a pome of Elizabeth Bishop. Because i love fishing!!

The Fish

I caught a tremendous fishand held him beside the boathalf out of water, with my hookfast in a corner of his mouth.He didn't fight.He hadn't fought at all.He hung a grunting weight,battered and venerableand homely. Here and therehis brown skin hung in stripslike ancient wallpaper,and its pattern of darker brownwas like wallpaper:shapes like full-blown rosesstained and lost through age.He was speckled and barnacles,fine rosettes of lime,and infestedwith tiny white sea-lice,and underneath two or threerags of green weed hung down.While his gills were breathing inthe terrible oxygen--the frightening gills,fresh and crisp with blood,that can cut so badly--I thought of the coarse white fleshpacked in like feathers,the big bones and the little bones,the dramatic reds and blacksof his shiny entrails,and the pink swim-bladderlike a big peony.I looked into his eyeswhich were far larger than minebut shallower, and yellowed,the irises backed and packedwith tarnished tinfoilseen through the lensesof old scratched isinglass.They shifted a little, but notto return my stare.--It was more like the tippingof an object toward the light.I admired his sullen face,the mechanism of his jaw,and then I sawthat from his lower lip--if you could call it a lipgrim, wet, and weaponlike,hung five old pieces of fish-line,or four and a wire leaderwith the swivel still attached,with all their five big hooksgrown firmly in his mouth.A green line, frayed at the endwhere he broke it, two heavier lines,and a fine black threadstill crimped from the strain and snapwhen it broke and he got away.Like medals with their ribbonsfrayed and wavering,a five-haired beard of wisdomtrailing from his aching jaw.I stared and staredand victory filled upthe little rented boat,from the pool of bilgewhere oil had spread a rainbowaround the rusted engine to the bailer rusted orange,the sun-cracked thwarts,the oarlocks on their strings,the gunnels--until everythingwas rainbow, rainbow, rainbow!And I let the fish go.

I really like this one because of its truthfulness. I believe the person talking in this poem about the fish is stating their awness towards its history. She starts out by explaining the fish, which she does a great job of. Then she talks about all the things that she sees in the fish. It helps create a great visual!! but I think what she is getting at is that she has so much respect for this fish that has made it this far almost like a war vet. That she has to let it go because it deserves to be in an appropriate setting. So she caught it admired it then "Let it go" awesome, in fact I would probably do the same thing after reeling in something as beautiful as that!!