The Disappearing Trout

The following poem was inspired about an hour ago upon reading a wonderful essay called "On Behalf of Love" by Tara Boyce, wife of my good friend Ryan Boyce. Read it first or read my poem first, however you would like. Anyway, for a first draft, I think this poem turned out pretty well.

The Disappearing Trout

Once, fishing a lagoon, few miles from home, I imagined love

was the trout hiding in the brownwater,

                                                               camouflaged and fading

in and out of sunwater, its slippery existence often in question.

For a moment, a ripple, and my hands tightened on the reel.

Then the sky returned to the surface and the frogs laughed

deep in the cattails. The cardinals sang some serenade of sympathy,

while I tipped my cap and listened to two faint pulses linger in the air:

one in the lengthening tresses of shadows off the willow

                                                            covering me, like a brittle ribcage

and another in the dusk breeze that, when I opened my eyes again,

swept over the water like a school of fish fleeing the night.

The final ripples of light made me want to disappear also,

though above, love left its own hook dangling in the darkness,

so enticing that the trees leaned together

                                    and the moon followed a line of stars.

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It seems I've gone back recently to making interesting space on the page of the poem that I hope adds to the overall feeling of the poem. I think this poem turned out really well (though I suppose you could call it a second draft because I wrote it, did homework, then revised it and am now posting it). In case you haven't read Tara's essay, there's a part in it where she talks " love fades in and out like a rainbow trout in between shadow and sunwater." That by itself was intriguing until she turned it around and said "Perhaps love is not the fish in this metaphor. We are." To myself, I then imagined myself as the fish and, conversely, love as the fisherman, which image spawned the idea behind this poem and especially the last 4 lines of the poem. Is it that love fades in and out, or is it us jilting towards and away from love, love that wants to catch us if we would let it. That was what I wanted to convey, in a sense. Hope you enjoyed it!