Just Fishing: a poem

 

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