The Sheksna

No pike looks for pearls,

pointed and toothed, it takes

the roach and perch in a direction of death -

in the Sheksna, this is the music played

on a pike's jawbone. A mouth that cracks

like an axe through wood, devours

each tale of monstrous fish

that could swallow a piglet

whole; a pike is true, only to itself. 

And the water is cold in the fold

of the unconscious which worms

into the blindness of dreams

unremembered - what is unseen

beneath the murk, the greed

that swims above the gravel.

Perhaps ferocity makes the pike

too efficient: its own enemy,

but life has always been a fight,

and the river, the river

has no religion, it carries all

her children, absent of dilemma.

 
There is a Russian folktale about the pike in the River Sheksna who eat all the roach and perch and then are forced to feed on the worms, then they, themselves, are caught by a fisherman.

Image is from here: https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Esox_lucius_ZOO_1.jpg

Also on Twitter: https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Winslow_Homer_-_Pike,_Lake_St._John_(1897).jpg