Endless Lawn XXIX

Crabbing

The fish are as long as your pinky finger,

maybe longer, depending on your size.

They look like they’re swimming,

because they are, but they’re not going anywhere.

Like the kestrel that seems to hover in the air.

Their school easily numbers in the hundreds. 

Maybe there are thousands of them,

if you had the patience to count.

I don’t have patience.

I have a vinyl-coated wire crab trap.

And I have a plastic bag full of chicken legs.

And I have a sunburn.

But when the little fish

take the notion to flourish

and swarm up out of the water for a moment,

my sunburn and my trap do not exist.

It is an ephemeral flash.

It is a heartbeat in the water.

It is a a glimmering light,

so quick and violent in its fragility.

It bursts and ceases like a laugh.

Like my laugh.

I don’t know what your laugh sounds like.

Maybe I’d like to know, 

but not when I see that 

little bold gesture of the shiners.

I don’t care about anything, 

but am held transfixed.

Only when it is finished 

does the weight of the trap 

return to my hand.

It’s calm water again.

Only the lazy sloughing water

beside a homely, rotting dock

beside a bridge on the edge of a little island.

But it’s full of little fish. 

And whether or not you catch any crabs,

or a sunburn,

they will sometimes dance.

T. Evans, July 2023