Tuesday, October 10, 2017

CATCH AND RELEASE POEM

Exhilarating to hold
so momentarily
close on a string, beautiful

yet unfeeling—
another gleaming,
streamlined, well-muscled

teardrop configuration
of dovetailing scales goes
limp—inevitably slipping, quick

and slimy, through your under-
apprenticed fingers—and at once
is instinctually swimming mechanically

out toward imagination's deep and
freezing sea. But
it still appears just as legitimate

and perfect and precise
when you see it become
a sharp speck, a miniature part

of the grand and silent
bluesilver painting known as
Seascape w/ Horizon

as it did when you
first held it up
and counted, savoring

all its uncannily self-
similar parts. And sure,
it probably would've been

more nourishing
to cook and consume every
morsel, but—still, ad-

mittedly, is aw-
fully wholesome—just to look at, crude
and in the distance.