Just Fishing
Something fishy this way comes
or he wants it to
standing on the
edge of the riverbank,
a new spot he’s
found now that
he’s moved away
after high school,
feet standing
in the tall grass
remembering
days of chasing
popcorn frogs
and water bugs
by the sandy
rim of the lake
when he was
knee high to a
grasshopper and
too excited to
concentrate on
his own fishing line.
Now he
straightens his cap and
recasts,
reflecting on the bird
quietly
watching him from the tree
branch across
the water, wondering
if it’s one of
the few wandering in
from the south,
visitors from the
warm climates
who can’t handle
the midwestern
winters; an example
of each
immigrant species laying
with wings
folded and feet clutching
invisible twigs,
their backs pressing
against glass
shelves in the University’s
new exhibit in
the museum, colorful
feathered
bellies rounded, facing up
in the case he
walked by on the way to
the mounted
insects, pointing out
each one he has
encountered in his
short two
decades here on this planet,
now listening
to the water trickle
by against
small stones as the fish
he waits to
hook create rings on the
small still
surface of a pooled outcrop
beside him, and
the time, the sun,
this afternoon,
for once seems to
almost stand
still, as still as the
moment before
his pole bends and
his bait yields
a bite and his shout
sends the
startled bird off flapping,
tree branch
waving goodbye, goodbye.
Tansy Julie the Soaring Eagle Paschold