Otherworld, Underworld, Prayer Porch. David Bottoms
No lunkers,
not even the pretense of a fish. Nobody even bothered
to untangle the backlashed reel.
Photo: Captured Gator, Canton, Georgia, 1960
Every few years a small one
would nab a trotline or waddle out of a cove where a Boy Scout
was grilling burgers. Crowds then, and theories —
somebody’s pet from Florida
flushed down a toilet or tossed into a creek.
Where I was raised anything unusual became a spectacle,
like this four-foot gator
held by Lee Spears behind the South Canton Trading Post.
Years later, in Florida, I paddled over
dozens of them in Lake Talquin, their eyes on the water
like small balls of moonlight.
Not one ever rose to the boat, or even stirred,
which makes me wonder now
why this one, jaws wired shut, keeps gnawing at me with its desperate eyes.
Blessings, Yellow Mountain
I could have killed the snake.
I had a pistol in my belt, a 9mm, a Smith & Wesson,
accurate, deadly, and I was a good shot.
I could have easily killed the snake.
But Jack and I were walking his turf, walking federal land,
and he coiled so placidly
across the oak root, not even lifting his head
to acknowledge our passing.
I could have killed him with one shot. Nobody
would’ve heard. We were miles
from the nearest road.
But Jack wasn’t even curious, and kept pulling me
up the path, sniffing the ground, lifting
a leg to piss on a stone.
I studied the moccasin for a moment longer —
the fat and terrible muscle of him, his black scales rippling
while a small wind
brushed his back with shadows.
Beautiful, sure, but I thought better of inching closer,
then followed the tug of Jack’s leash.
Over the top of the ridge
sunlight sliced in layers through the trees,
and suddenly out of the branch quiver,
an antler moved.
2
We look at the world once,
in childhood.
The rest is memory.
LOUISE GLÜCK
Spooked
If they spooked my old man he didn’t show it,
only lifted me onto his shoulders and leaned against our back gate.
We stared across the woods,
the cornstalks rising out of our neighbor’s garden.
Nobody knew what they were — those colored balls of light circling
the radio tower — a red ball, I remember, vaporous,
almost translucent, and a green and a blue, floating clockwise
around the tower.
My aunt had phoned in the middle of the night
to urge us into the yard for a look.
This was the summer of UFO reports, but if they spooked my old man,
he didn’t show it.
At eight or nine I was already in a panic —
everything seemed a sign.
Oddly, though, no one ever mentioned that night again,
and how reliable, really, is the memory?
Now when I try to force my mind back, it runs straight
to the bulbs on a tree, those Christmas lights
glazing our dining-room windows.
The Grocer’s Tackle Box
Not all dreams need to be realized.
PATTI SMITH
My obsession with gear
comes from a grandpa who rarely caught a fish
but kept in his tackle box one of every lure
he ever sold in his store.
I was especially drawn to the potbellied Bombers,
deep runners meant for pike and walleye,
but also the rainbow Rattlebugs, the pink doll flies trailing
yellow boas
loved by crappie and bass,
and the speckled plastic worms,
rubber frogs and tadpoles, the fat, tangerine Hula Poppers.
He kept his tackle box behind his cash register, tucked
behind cartons of bills and tax receipts.
As a boy I could walk by the Coke box and feel its draw.
Someday, he kept saying, he’d take me fishing
but never did. That was okay.
To prove the promise sometimes outweighs the fish,
he’d often let me open that box and thumb