I have a friend, who's a fisherman,
short and unathletic,
with a goatee that is well meant
but never trimmed.
He wants me to fish, to love
lures and tactics for luring.
Love scales and gills the way he does.
And he can't swim, never has.
I joke with him saying he is jealous of the fish,
who swim without him.
I tell him I don't have time to fish
before the lakes and creeks become sheet ice
for the winter, but maybe next year.
Honestly, I don't love fish enough
to want to look them in the eye, or fry them,
eating around each little plastic bone.
Mostly I am jealous of how they are lifted
and then released by the competing currents,
like it was their own creation, the water moving
with them and for them.
I cannot bring myself
to pull them from their own world
to the softer, hollow air that won't respond
like the currents of water,
even when they take to thrashing it
with their whole bodies like they do
hanging from a line.
That is when they remind me
the most of myself, and is why
I don't fish.
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