She studies my steelhead box
With deigned indifference,
Proclaims it looks like flapper jewelry,
Or a broadway makeup box.
Fish really fall for these? she asks
Dragging her fingertips
Lightly over the feathers.

I carefully pluck a pair
Of purple thunders,
Flatten the barbs with pliers,
Ask her to turn her head,
as I hook them in her ears
And watch before the mirror
Swiveling her head
This way and that
To catch the light,
Manufacturing motion
The way water animates.
Fish really fall for these? She repeats.

Same as you, I think,
Touching the flies
Imagining a five-foot-long,
Hundred-pounder
Yanking frantically on my line.
She twists her head,
Tells me “Don’t tug please, I’m not one
Of your trout.

Pity, I think,
Make a gift to her
She first refuses
Then nonchalantly tosses
Into the cavern of her purse.

Outside the house she stops near the yard light
 Digs in her bag,
Hurriedly re-hangs the purple feathers,
Jiggles her head and smiles
As she scoots out to her truck,
Taking the bait as surely as a steelhead,
Sharing the same weakness
For glitz.

A sea of Polar air so severe
We’ve switched to Kelvin.
Words freeze in my larynx,
Too cold for salt,
The county’s switched to sand
Which turns the roads
To mocha.
I dream of blue herons
Riding thermals along oxbows,
Lifting suddenly
Looking back,
Me in shorts and boots
My neck and shoulders
Prickling from
Yesterday’s burn,
July on the MibraOnty
I work upstream
Pool-to-pool,
Tail to head,
Prospecting with Royals,
Coachmen and Trudes.
Some summer days
I throw a chartreuse Deceiver
Or perilously red Sea-Ducer.
My brother-in-law scoffing
At my creativity.
“Sweetwater, you damn fool. Sweetwater!”
A man, you see
with no capacity
for whimsy.
In any event, this is my dream.

January, the snows arc like
Texas Leaguers
Run out of gas and altitude.
I kneel before St. Weber, watching
Pickerel fillets
Brown in lemon and dill,
Think foil bent just right
Might be a flashy indicator.

I serve salmon
On an earthen platter
Garnished with Hairy Marys and Rusty Rats.
The wife says, “You don’t know how you get
When you’re on a kick.”

I believed in Indiana Jones
Before he was Hollywood,
Took five small browns
From the same hole
In a bend of Brush Creek,
Sitting on the bank,
My feet in clay, and of it.
I heard the Potawatomi
Fished this water
Before the Iroquois
Drove the Hurons here to hide,
Chickenshit and baptized
Squeaky Christian-clean.
Cold and slow or hot she trots
The temperature counts
Except at Kelvin’s.

This week two cardinals
Came to the tulip tree
Danced one morning
In snow-covered branches
For the two house cats
Who shivered behind glass
Like hothouse flowers,
This during what the TV
Called
The coldest snap of the century.
I danced with the cardinals
That morning
In my red Speedo,
Bought when I
Was a hundred pounds
Lighter,
My fish-flesh reddened,
The wife in the bay window
With two cats
Mouthing words she reserves
For fools.

Helveticus
Sits on a barstool in his yard
Casting skyward,
No line on the reel
I can see.

“Air Fish,” he proclaims
glancing up.
“I had a dandy glass carp
On at daybreak
Lost him after an hour.
Sometimes smallmouth
Drift in after noon,
When the sky warms.”

I tell him he should try the real thing.
“And risk a skunk?” he counters
incredulously, casting again.

A blue-hair brings us fresh lemonade.
Bodoni, his wife’s maiden name,” he says.
“A match made in type. Begone wench,” he adds,
“We’re at men’s work.”

We sit on manicured Bermuda green
Watching clouds drifting side by side.
“Peaceful,” he says, “here under my river.
The secret in this game is to let them
Hatch in your mind.
Ignore the dinks, wait for the good.”

Mid-afternoon the sky goes blue.
Helveticus mutters, “Lousy break,
but there’s always tomorrow.”

When I leave, he is watching The Weather Channel.

Morning sky burnished
Butternut under
Air squizzled flat
By impending winter’s
Celestial garlic press,
My windshield grouted
With hoarfrost,
I think of soldiers
Stashed like nuts
By the great
Five-sided squirrel
In EYERACK,
Yooper boys
In red sand
Dreaming of bucks,
Old days
When they were
Not prey, and
Prayed only for
Luck in the woods,
Mayhaps
A few good
Cribbage hands.

[Portage, MI. March 22, 2002]

Two days past the equinox,
Sixteen degrees,
Snow-salt billowing in diaphanous sheets
I find five robins dancing an awkard gopak
On the dirt beds
In front of Bob Evans at 7 a.m.
Their legs stiffened to brittle chalk
Chests puffed to suck air close
To their hearts,
They looked confused, desperate
Last-leggers in survival mode,
A miscalculation in timing
Nature spurning anything less than
Genetic perfection, getting it right,
Giving no second chances.
I think if they live, perhaps
Their progeny will be smarter
Gauging winter’s end.
Like nature I give it no further
Thought, go inside
For oatmeal and coffee,
My self-interest driving me
No less than dancing birds.

Heikki Luunta
Finnish god of da snow,
Ya know?
He give da sixxy mile hour
Wins an’ da rain,
Dis onna saddiday night
Over to da Judge’s house
In Bev-ly Hills
(No Clampetts dere —I looked, eh?),
Da whole gang sippin’ single malts ta wet dere
whistles
while Norm played da skinny bag a pipes
Detroit, see --  da Frenchies called
It Da Narrows, eh,
Da way da winds could get it up
Coming down from noreas’,
Make da river music dose days.

Next we knew, da wind
She cuts da power from da houses
Number bout ooh, a same as da whole Yoop, eh?
(Dat’s a bunch!)
And dere we was in da trucks on slicky ice
Skatin’ along dem feel-ways
Ta Booby Kook’s
An’ time we got over dere,
Bobby had da gen-rater
Crankin’ like da snow-trower
An’ a fire in da fireplace,
Scotches sittin’ dere waitin’
For da buncha us
An’ Charlie, his dog
So glad to see ‘em
She’s rollin’ on da floor
Like da toy,
Givin’ him da fleabites,
{Nips eh, not breakin’ da skin},
And him gigglin’ like dis was fun.

Come daybreak Bobby had da old camp stove
In da house and hot,
 settin up for
Rocky an’ Bullwinkle
McMuffins –
(Dat’s moose an’ squirrel
To you flatlanders),
Da squirrel cooked in some wine called
Spot-lazy an’ curry like dey use
In da Orient,
Muffins fried crisp,
Old style in da pan.

Cripes, I can tell yas, it was like campin’
Wit poachers up on da Garden
In April when da fish runs start
An’ da game wardens got ‘emselves
All inna tizzy we might
Grab and eye a little early!

Lufda, we’re dere for da Midwest Fly Show,
But da good show, she was over dere
At da Judge’s an Bobby’s & Charlie’s
In da dark
And dat’s da way she went, eh?

[Toronto. April 24, 1994]

In the city
The prime time for trout,
No choice,
I walk the quick-step,
Eyes ahead,
Walking point,
Squinting like a polar walker,
The air in Gehenna still,
Zephyrless as an oven,
Sweat glues my shirt
To my back.
When I stop to catch
My breath and smoke
I sense movement
In the shadows.
“I’m cookin,” she says low-like,
“Kin you hep a lost lady?”
She has the graceful finger
Movements of a Thai
Temple dancer, this skel
Called Rose-a-Mort,
Brown-eyed, noisome
Practitioner of the pinchbeck,
She vamp-scans passers-by,
An actuary of action,
Lifting a filthy pink skirt
To reveal
A littoral of thin legs,
Emaciated hip-bones
Pressed over diaphanous skin,
She squalls like
The sulfur-crested cuckoo
At sunset
Keening for a handout
To buy a fix, no illusions,
No hunger here
But for oblivion
In the molten-melt
Push-a-gush
Into a strapped down,
Tapped up
Blue vein hard as aged hemp,
Not the high anymore,
But panacea
Like aspirin,
General anesthetic
Against living.
So low,” she crows, beat flat,
a victim of chances taken
and not, she shifts
rinforzando,
“ante-up my wikiup,
my little whiteworm,
the buzz-kill
hangs over me,
I need to scromp
Or knuckle-up to nasty,
Go hatless with
A broke-to-the-curb maggot,’
Dance the phantsula
In Flashabou butt-floss.
How you think I get this way, Mister,
And you like that?
Don’t seem like God’s plan
Where the Lord Jesus done gone,
The one I be knowin’ in my
Childhood where Bah-piss
Drinked the Drano, spoked in tongues?
Maybe the devil, that old
Beelzebub got hisseff inside me,
I hear he lives round my hood,
Preys on wimmins down on the luck.

Cracked the window at dawn,
Listened to turtle doves on the eaves
While the upstairs neighbors
Rocked their bed
Whumpa-whump, whumpa whump,
A steady rhythm free of haste,
The beat of pleasure over lust,
A good fifteen minutes
A short squeal punctuating the finish.
Geese flapped off their nests in the marsh
Sqawking loudly to get off
As Maintenance banged
Around the other apartment above me
Destroying something
To rebuild it,
An old story.
A robin hopped on the lawn being picky,
Under a gray sky.
Snow tomorrow,
The equinox here no more than a word,
Buried my nose in Ha Jin’s novel
Waiting, which summed up
My day, my mood, my heart.

[Iceland. January 1998]

Icies call the trail
Legbreaker, where
Icie horses graze gorse,
Letting their shaggy brown cartoon
Heads bobble like
Promo dolls for Heisman candidates
Or Jim Henson puppets,
We hear
The horses have a gait
So smooth
You can place an axe-head on their backs,
A Singapore Sling on top that
And talk to your neighbors
As you ride past cairns
Piled with hollow bones
Stuffed with messages,
Of a thousand years of travelers
And maybe your companion
Hands you a skyr
Or whale blubber
Seasoned with questions about
The sex lives of 212s,
Though I prefer
Only good directions
Pointing to native
Brown trout.

[Portage, MI. April 2, 2002]

Sex, so physically natural
The penultimate biological imperative
So often culturally unnatural,
All that foreplay
Words to soothe or entice,
Like gaudy birds showing colors
To seduce, influence choice
To complete the connection
Mechanics and positions aside,
When one plus one equals one
Briefly.

Not much different than when
We are one on one with a trout
In a freshet,
Nurturing and encouraging
its struggle upstream
to hand or net,
Only to let it go lovingly
To catch it again.

Allowing for recovery time
For both parties.

[Baldwin, MI. Mother's Day 2001]

It’s one of those mysteries
attaching to the double-nickel crowd,
how short-term memory kangaroos,
reducing life to earthbound
questions, shamusinquiries
about sunshades, eyeglasses,
my right wading boot,
the hat last seen in Edie’s Log Cabin
Bar, where we contracted  Karaoke fever,
bellowing “I  got friends in low! places,”
reading words off a VDT
hung from the ceiling like a fat black bat
and later Robochef sits on a grass mound
above the Birch Run
trying to tie on a #20 something, looks up, asks,
You got those flip-down clip-on magnifier doohickies?
I know I put them in my vest, I know this.
In the vest they went, a vest so loaded with dupes
And trips it would serve as Kevlar against
Incursive lead,
It’s in the vest, you know, with five lighters,
two clippers, a notebook and pen,
the H2O-proof camera, xtra 400 ASA film,
A couple of small lights to find the trail
In the woods after dark,
two pliers, two forceps,
a half-dozen fly boxes held together with rubber bands,
a purple rabbits foot,
amber and gray lens sunglasses,
a net on my back with two connecting gizmos.
a brace of watches, an extra Croakie,
tippet spools from 0X to 8X,
both extremes unlikely to ever be used,
a spool with sinking line, a rain jacket stuffed in the back pouch,
two measuring tapes, a tube of strike indicators and split shot.
I stand there patting myself down hoping for the easy find,
finally resort to opening Velcro pocket flaps and secret compartments and
on the eighth or ninth try, find it and hold it out to Robo, thinking
I have to get an extra one—just in case. 
Robo grins through his Muslim whiskers,
How come you carry all that crap?
“It’s good for the memory, I say.
“You want the damn doohickey or not, you ungrateful SOB?”

[Baldwin, MI. Mother's Day 2001]

Forward is backward,
backward forward,
like forward is down &
backward up in a plane, my only job
to keep the formula straight
as we disembowel & shatter
hundred-pound oak rounds
still so green          
we can feel them clutch life
 in their sappy knots.

The splitter is home-made, fifteen years
ago, a clinky-clanky hydraulic ripper-stripper
driven by a five-horse lawnmower engine.
and hydraulic arm the length of a Lambreta.
It begs a lube, balking sometimes
as it clatters to catch its breath, burping to
clear an airway before it resumes work.

We argue all day about terminology,
ricks versus ranks
as cluttered ground becomes a neat pile
the height of Wilt the Stilt and three times
as long.

I find the work mindless, turn myself into
and astronaut using delicate jet puffs to
maneuver things around in space
outside the lab. Occasionally a log splits with a sharp pop, throws
remains into space and
I remember gravity is in our favor here,
we can fetch them where they lie, avoid having
to plot a mission
in higher math toward the moon
or worry about reentry
& sundry techie crapaloids.

In those moments
when my mind comes back to earth,
I think not of wood,
but of Hendricksons
and maybe tonight we catch a spinnerfall.

[Portage, MI. May 18, 2001]

I was once asked
if I used drugs
in the Sixties.
No, my mind
is weird enough
without chemical complications.

The mind is like an endless cavern
most of which we never visit
by choice, most of which remains
unknowable, by design.

Pricking my finger every day
to check the sweetness of my blood
I think about a friend
who put a .38 to her head
and pulled the trigger.

To draw blood that way you need
an instant of resolve, (less with scotch)
and slight physical effort,
be it a lancet, or a Colt.

I sometimes look at
pinprick scars on my fingers
and know the Colt-yanker’s
scars are retained by others,
passed on to them to fester
in the process mind-benders
call grief.

Some people think they are choosing
when choices are made for them
beyond their control,
the engine mixed in genes and life
somewhere down in that cavern
only pathologists can see
and then only superficially.

[Mio, MI. May 1, 2001]

If I was a physicist
designing alphabet bombs
we’d all be dead as black holes
through my incompetence.
my guide is overwrought
that I have lost a big fish,
handling a 5 wt like a 2 x 4.
He tries to console
with the tenderness he might employ
if Taiga’s having a bad retrieving day,
only she doesn’t have such days.
I was philosophical.
They’re just fish.
He looks at me the way Marcel Marceau
might under torture to make him speak out loud.
Those two words don’t belong together, he says
he stammers.
Just fish!?
Did Hemingway say just a lion when
he missed a shot?
Did Joe Dimaggio call Marilyn just a girl?
His fifty-six games, just a streak?
Did Nixon proclam, just a glich with his tape recorder?
Apollo 13, just a re-entry?
Wayne Gretzky, just a few goals?
Evel Knievel standing at Hell’s Canyon, just a jump?
The 1980 win over the Russians just a hockey game?
Just a fish, just a fish. Jesus, god.
He was silent the remainder of the float.

[Mio, MI. May 6, 2001]

I suffer piscination,
obsessing for trout,
wearing Polarized glasses,
alternating colors to
match the sky and my moods,
to plumb the creeks
traveled at double-nickel.

On rivers, I seek what pass
for explanations,
understanding, why-fors and what-suches.

Floating past The Meadows we are
a few miles into the float,
only one half-assed flash at a streamer
to show for six hours of effort.

Comes a sound, close but far
off beyond the cedars to the south.
Bear, God offers?
Owl on the prowl, says the guide.
I say, tired of a fish-and-berry diet, I’m thinking
carnivorous space cow devouring a bear.

Biologists and realists reject this
As flawed logic and worse science,
But  let us remember,
experts pifflicated
Gallileo’s view of the universe
for six centuries.

I am not swayed by science
inadequate for the moment.
all the big trout seem gone from
these nutritious waters,
a liquid smorgasbord. 

I demand explanation.
and a space cow makes as much sense
as barometric pressure plummets
or a fish god’s  petty vengeance.

[Mio, Mi. May 20, 2001]

There is a sameness to this float,
The identical start, the ritual
Of hauling the boat agains the current
Over loose cobble to the shadow
Of the bride and throwing
Our legs over the gunwhales
As our guide roars,
Knock their dicks off, boys!
Cast, cast, cast

God rocks the boat
When we are flingedly flogging
The AuSable with
Rattlesnakes, vaginators,
Zoo cougars, dizzy blondes,
Shovel heads.

God chucks streamers with his soul
and the body follows
making the boat lurch and yaw,
left and right, sploonking the bow on smooth green water,
spraying us
with the energy of
an LST plowing toward Omaha Beach,
his motion a storm
of activity, a relentless
metronomic  nine casts a minute,
hour after hour.

Afterwards we wrap
his shoulder and elbow in ice packs,
make a fire in the Brown Trout Suite,
have a splash of Spanish sherry.

You think maybe
we’ll throw streamers tomorrow? he asks.

“I reckon (Note to Self:
Bring Dramamine!)

The dogs are on my heels,
Demanding treats,
Payment in advance
For spending
A day alone.
I wear sandals,
Wool longies,
Hoping mercury
Will find a way
To creep into the 40s.

I turn on Fox
Watch
Sophomoric charades,
Rightwing anchors
Hawking their own books,
Wax-faced nerds & wonks
Trumpeting like
Angry geese
At all who dare
Take exception
To right-handed views,
A far cry from
Journalism
Taught at MSU
Some 40 years before,
When dictionaries
Defined an anchor
As a dead weight.

[Saginaw, MI. December, 14 2002]

I take in the sights along the way,
Brown eggs & rabbits,
Daniel’s God-Band-Church,
Cutt U oune tre
Centennial Farm
Class C MHSAA State Pom Pom Runners-up
Beagell  Puppys (sic),
Woman in a red sweatshirt,
Running along the side of the road,
Her hood up, back proclaiming,
STILL HOT AT 60.
Speed L m t: 5 ph

A silverhair man,
Razor cut neat,
Italian loafers, cashmere sweater
Comes to the table,
Nods at the book piles,
They any good?
Better’n you in bed your old lady says.
“Okay,” he says, not registering, “Anything on golf?”
Ask a clerk

[Stockholm, 1997]

The King eats here
The Swedes tell me
In a restaurant in Old Town,
All the patrons with cell phones
Pasted to their heads,
Talking to God, I decide,
Making reservations –
Given their propensity
For suicide,
Which they always cite to visitors.

I ask my friend Lars about the best bait for trout
And he says Nobel,
You light the dynamite
Throw it, wait for the fish to float up,
A more practical way
Than one fish at a time.

I ask a businesswoman
if she would like
A Linie,
the aquavit
That travels on ships
across the equator
To give it time to cure
Into marketing cache.
She says she prefers to go around the world
In bed, this being
Less expensive, more immediate
We Swedes being a frugal people.