“remarkable ponds and/cattails”
Robin Blaser
Five bluegill, a rock bass, one pumpkinseed,
& several finger length perch for tossing
back, all by noonday when, content to ease up,
drowsy-eyed, I rest on a ruined milk bucket turned
downside up on the promising ridge of pebbled,
farm pond shoreline, the pond set somewhere
in the middle of a bean field, a Nowhere
far from the incessant drone of the Interstate
traffic where there’s no one around to answer to
& I’m able to look longingly into that other world
that has no language, a world where words can’t hurt
nor obscure nor matter in the least, my fingers itching
brilliantly for the slightest hint of a jerking nibble
as my chartreuse jig plunks once more into the pond’s
blackness, the weed-hole at that far end of my whip-
thin fishing line to find what there is that does matter.