Fishing With You
The fish we fish for lurk
in logs half-sunk in slurried muck
while fish you catch shake diamonds
into golden air that suspends
their ecstatic twists, silver sinews
of glimpsed gods flashing
a fixed moment into eternity
at their apogees. Our fish groan
and mutter from ice chests
streaked with bloody mud; yours
lie in stippled splendor,
wrapped in scented leaves
like enemies half-divine only lords
of ancient lines can kill.
The small whirlpools our oars
stir into a darkened mirror
of leaden heaven fast disappear
like dents in swollen dough.
But there you ride enthroned,
furrowing forth behind
flaring spumes of silver sillion.
You rock my boat. You shake
my milky bilge to stink.
The bank melts its sullen mud
in your wake, a seeping stain
sullies rusty shafts of sun
that glimmer like fevered dream
on cretaceous caudals
fanning soft silt into silent swirls.
in logs half-sunk in slurried muck
while fish you catch shake diamonds
into golden air that suspends
their ecstatic twists, silver sinews
of glimpsed gods flashing
a fixed moment into eternity
at their apogees. Our fish groan
and mutter from ice chests
streaked with bloody mud; yours
lie in stippled splendor,
wrapped in scented leaves
like enemies half-divine only lords
of ancient lines can kill.
The small whirlpools our oars
stir into a darkened mirror
of leaden heaven fast disappear
like dents in swollen dough.
But there you ride enthroned,
furrowing forth behind
flaring spumes of silver sillion.
You rock my boat. You shake
my milky bilge to stink.
The bank melts its sullen mud
in your wake, a seeping stain
sullies rusty shafts of sun
that glimmer like fevered dream
on cretaceous caudals
fanning soft silt into silent swirls.
