Joe Powell
FISHING TILL DARK
We fished in the last half-hour
~Joe Powell
of light, casting midges and mayflies.
As the insects hatched, they bounced
in the sheer joy of being alive.
After them, some fish made flying leaps
others sipped or dimpled the surface,
some finned sideways circling, planning,
some skimmed along, missing fly and case.
I thought of the drowned man who yesterday
believed in himself, the river’s sweet song;
Now, his hands searched among the rocks
for something lost, what went wrong.
I saw a dark blue jacket floating free,
the neck open, imagining a face.
A pallid moon wrinkled on the water,
again when the heron flushed from his hiding place.
His frightened wroak made the trees shiver
the way an echo echoes again in our heads.
Black fishbacks arched like cupped hands
calling us in, beyond the easy shallows.
Out of reach they rolled
and rolled until the dark began to subtract everything.
Like water, it filled our clothes, our ears.
An owl called—a deep emptiness, floating.
Cars moved on the high road, earth-bound meteors.
We walked back toward our pickup trucks
talking of bodies, the purchase of decay.
Branches were fingers, rocks were skunks.
We talked louder, laughed, scuffed our shoes.
The moon made long thin hand-shadows.
In the sky’s waters, white eyes floated
and the drowned man in us kept looking up.
About Joe Powell
Joe Powell’s book of stories in 2007 titled Fish Grooming & Other Stories from March Street Press was a finalist for the Washington State Book Award; his latest book of poems, Hard Earth, was published in 2010 by March Street Press. Joe teaches writing at Central Washington University.