I kneel in a field of wheat grass
catching grasshoppers.
I scoop underhand into my jar, another
at the height of its jump, a third.
I put my jar by the stream, pull one
out and I grab it, force my barbed steel
hook through the belly still trembling.
I cast long loops of line into the drift
below rocks where current
froths and whirls.
I stand mechanically slightly ashamed, uncomfortable on that shaded bank
where trout strike hard.
I let them swim, then hold fast, reeling one, exhausting him, wrenching him
into air, his tail drumming against the sky.
Hanging from the line
his fat belly flinches.
All his life of riding rapids, hiding
in flats embraced by waters’ fast flow,
by red rainbows in his scales.
I didn’t expect that open mouth,
that whiteness, the gills stop twitching,
the eyes caught in that open stare.