previous | next

AQUATIC ANGST He thinks the fish he landed, the huge stripe bass’ eye sees a monster’s face, a demon with soft hands of fire that boils its slick body in the acid of air with a tease from the hook’s barb that now knits the gasping jaw closed. He imagines himself such beautiful meat with a cruel demise, no longer privy to the love and seclusion of the black emptiness from which he was snatched. He places the rod upon the sand and enters the ocean until he can taste the salt then asks the tide to mend all wounds on the motionless flesh in his extinguished hands, that it might again have life and return to the bounty of the cold world in the dark coral depths where this bass might then dream of him in the bottomless sea, of his hands and his sorrowful blue eyes.

previous | next