Thorpe Moeckel
Same Water, Different Fish
See the eyes, weighted head,
as it jerks – Lefty’s Deceiver – tug
by wrist snap,
seven feet of leader, tapered.
Here land
goes under – salt, sun, sand –
a balance so vast
it’s cartoonish. Some inlay
of attention, some search engine.
The land
goes under. Compression borrows
your highlighter. Striper
run – schoolies: Scooby snacks.
Another swiveling. Casts
(say Kineo, Kennebec) – another
& another.
Water
the behind the on top of, a
piling, a footer
of pour. You land
some; lips rip. Savagery runs
through you
like love, like
those fish, arm-length, flopping
at eddy-edge,
launched by seals, stunned
to meal.
Merrymeeting Bay, March
Spring’s close,
the ice says so —
tide-fractured,
a thousand acres
melts, sweet
break-up. Listen
to the scrape
& boom. Piebald,
multi-divoted,
half slush, half prune;
think gum
chewed, think trilobite,
a sheepish one.
All day puddles
bloom avocado
in the balm; all
day swan-whites
oyster into cloud tones,
and then eddy —
slow, adhesive light —
through the white pines
behind the gravestones
and down to the imploded
heap of a winter
fishing shack – fungus
of lumber, stovepipe, rust.
Thorpe Moeckel is the author of Odd Botany. Chapbooks include Meltlines, The Guessing Land, and Making a Map of the River. He teaches at Hollins University and lives near the James River north of Roanoke.