“And catfish twist through the bones
	Of what never bothered to rise.”
		 – from “I. The Ohio,” Joe Bolton

Your body is wrapped in his barbels,
drug across the muddy floor
away from the asthmatic blue sky

inhaler, pulled by the colossal fish
through a cloud of exploding dirt – 
poof – you are sunk by a last drink
of the river.

You are pulled far enough
each rescue spills through my hands
like water –

How long will I chase the bottom?
We can’t know the view from there 

until we are stupid or unlucky
or just too old and tired. Then an absence
of gills won’t matter – 

I laugh at the fish as my bare toes cut 
the surface current, 

because fish are stupid enough
they eventually wear down 
out of hunger, curiosity, or pure 
stumbling in the dark; 

eventually, they nibble
at anything in their way, even toes.

This is some kind of revenge,
Sport, echoes the absent bank 
as I jerk the line to paralyze
his fight. 

I drag him up – awed lips – 

to choke on the burdens of breathing – 
his whiskers – taste buds
sensing death like defiant tongues,

stuck out as if to say, We took your father
for this. I cower on the rock, crawl up
to see an empty swing swinging,

kick-started by the wind, and each second
ticks off its pendulum:

I wake to the forest’s requiem:
the coyote eating chickens 
from the neighbor’s coop; naturally,
howling.

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