Fly-fishing,
I stand mid-stream and thigh deep,
line trailing.
Fleet shadow on the water . . .
up,
the bird
drops on wind, lands in a birch. I’ve
never seen
one before. No thought of fish now.
For full ten
minutes I gape.
He stays.
I
step on land
careful to keep the tree he’s in
in focus.
He hops behind the trunk as
I circle.
A full circle
and no bird.
Three dull taps.
Three more. He’s in
another tree
behind me.
He falls, drops across the river,
twice beats wing,
lights on a dead beach.
I am soon
waist deep ten feet beneath him.
He must fear the threat from land,
not water.
Now I am his and see
all
of him clear:
the blood crest and zebra throat,
the black sheen
of his back, the stiff feathers
he grasps bark
with,
crampon-like,
dangling
underneath.
Infinitely patient he is
listening.
Infinitely insistent,
he hammers
in threes and sevens and eights,
each
beat
stressed.
Something not
one man in all the world could do.
He chops from two sides just like a
lumberjack.
Bark chips and wood dust
rain down
on my head.
A hand-shaped
patch he clears of bark then drills
a thumb hole,
then seems to give up (or has tongued
the gummy larvae)
and moves on.
Imagine
that sticky membrane sheathed in iron.
All this is
repeated and repeated and
nothing quells
his hunger
or blunts his intent.
He has mind:
curious, cruel, incisive,
reasoning—
he solves problems, remembers,
is cunning
(if not wicked), devious, his
consciousness
a thing that has come before and
after me.
I do not hear his wild call
even once.
Leaving first,
I take no pleasure
but rightness.
