Ode to All the Trout I Ever Caught

1.

… down turkey feather first,

after thread and lead base.

how’s it go?

craned across a vice, recalling river recipes

hold quill,

insert plume in mouth,

tug through lips generously puckered

and tear a square end?

ok, then,

if I want flash, secure a wire.

chenille, in eight turns,

one and two and three and four and…

run to the eye of the shank.

alright, there’s more,

yup, but do i have the cape?

hen’s dyed black grizzly neck hackle,

so when teasing the wispy barbules

they show water like mist shows air…

Sure.

But instead, I‘d rather whip you up something

from the pheasant slain midflight

by my dad’s pickup. Skinned and salted in

a West Virginia garage, and mailed first

class via the US Postal Service.

2.

I know by heart the classics, though:

hares’ ears and squirrel tails,

princes, royal wullfs and coachmen,

san juan worms and wooly buggers

girdle bugs (known elsewhere as pat’s

rubber legs), zonkers, clousers, muddlers,

whatever--

3.

You are religiously seasonal eater, and I admire that.

micro black and brown mayfly

nymphs huddled under rocks

when ice bridges two sides

of a slow-going creek,

pale morning

duns gently rising near to

forget-me-nots softly blooming in the tail

of a riffle cascading over polished granite,

worms blasted from tender edges

of high-flow lines marked by the

violence of caged water escaping,

until the last of the first ice

becomes river fodder,

then, armored hoppers springing

think, unidirectional

pops of hot corn, or

spiked footballs fumbling

from scorched banks of yellowing grass.

4.

I guess I’m sorry I tricked you,

when I, The Half-Waterproof Man,

in a tight-line aerial performance,

tossed a little sculpture of twisted

hairs and feathers tied of dead things

across whipping current,

outlying branches

mending,

mending,

mending,

to lie it to rest like a bug momentarily

seized in the tension of water

gripping faux micro

limbs in a pool

by a rock.

5.

But I am human, and you are fish

so listen close, because this is complicated:

there’s a beetle in Australia that continuously

fucked the dimples of brown beer bottles

until it nearly went extinct.

6.

And you were saving my life

(yes, actually):

when we were both getting shot

with hero doses of dopamine

and epinephrine out of firing personal

prediction engines in the moments

before and after that trick got spoiled,

remember?

you had fish goggles and

I had guy goggles but we were just

talking just wanting to eat and you got all excited

because you thought you saw a bug and my body

saw tomorrow when I put that hook in your mouth.

7.

I know, yikes, my fault

but I needed your attention,

to say plainly that for millions

of years the shorthand worked,

but now there is corn in my DNA

and fake bugs on the water,

yet, select brown bumps still appear

beetle to select brown bumpy beetles,

and I since I have you on the line:

8.

my species says you’re a fish, but that’s conditional.

Can fish tell time

from a moment,

some immeasurable number of days

before there were days to measure--

the bang we all forgot?

stardust, suddenly, matter.

10.

i can see you like a rainbow

sun water reflection light me

collaborating with you a funny

art project sailing kites of speckled

mountain geodes hanging

just above the shifting bottoms

of living, nameless water.