Fish
by Kate Romney Johnson
It was the smell of it on my hands
and the slime of the egg sack in my fingernails
when I slit open its belly,
thumb against the dull teeth of its mouth,
scales slippery on my skin,
that made me know the water,
how the ice flows in spring melt.
It was snipping the hook from gill,
stroking the soft fin
that made me know the flies
with wings like drowned fairies
on the surface of the lake,
the slow dread of breathing, crushed limbs
of trees slowly sinking
into a great, stinking mouth.
But, it was putting my eye to the fish’s eye
that made me know the joy of fish.
The joy of jumping a sunrise arc.
The wild wet wonder of diving
into mud at the bottom of the basin,
made me forsake my legs for the swish
of wet-rimmed lake trails
and in this way leave my house,
and in this way leave my tent,
to sleep instead under diamond air
hovering in the darkness.