I’m still seeing
that grass pickerel hovering
clear sun-shafted pool
down in hemlocked gullybrook,
gill slits unhinging, fins fluttering
as I stood with cold, pruning feet
afraid to startle it back
upstream to the pipe
that carried the spring water
under the freeways’ hurry
still droning on now as ever,
relentless concrete river.
The pike’s sleek 10 inch
green sleeve slid under
a stump and I’ve never
seen another one since,
leaving me to die alone,
bereft of rainbow
darters, pumpkinseed sun
fish and cedar waxwings
that can only be seen
on the internet, life-like
pixels glinting like scales
sinking into swirling murk.
—
Ray McNiece is the author of eleven books of poems and monologues most recently Bone Key Sutra, Love Song for Cleveland, and Breath Burns Away, New Haiku (Red Giant Press, 2019). From 2020 to 2023, he served as the Poet Laureate of Cleveland Heights. He received the Cleveland Arts Prize Lifetime Achievement Award in 2021. In 2022, he was awarded a $50,000 Poet Laureate Grant from the American Academy of Poetry for his Poem for Cleveland Project. www.raymcniece.com.
