FISH LAKE


I said it to McCormick (fake name) driving past the egg stand,
buckets full of plankton and gasoline for the outboard
sloshing dangerously in a flat bottom boat
M. was pulling along at too great a speed

"I had this lucky hash pipe . . ."

That romance trailed off and died amidst the screaming pheasants

He just wanted to turn around

"I don't need any eggs," I said

There were vineyards nearby, but corn where the earth
flattened heading east out of Van Buren County

It thundered in the west

Deer looked off into the trees over their broken legs

A white pine was split and burned, and the air smelled green

There was a guy who looked like Bob Dylan pulling an
oxygen canister, he wanted some brown eggs

A few ducks swam on a dirty pond near a giant hand-lettered
000sign

O'Malleys, no apostrophe

McCormack handed a boy a folded ten dollar bill

"I'll take two dozen," he said

The nets had gotten tangled up that afternoon

"Calm down, calm down, remember the baby sturgeons," M. said,
his gut a slight bulge over his belt, while he steered the boat

I couldn't get anything right, at home, at work . . .

I threw the useless nets into the green water

"Okay, I need to count to ten," I said, looking up at the
dark-bottomed, newly forming cumulus clouds racing over
the sunlit green spearheads of several spruces that huddled along
000the opposite
shore--across from the boat launch--where no one'd ever lived