THE ARITHMETIST GOES FISHING

one

On the cleanest gravel bars
red-sided trout spawn, then die.
The largest females fall back
to the water with loud smacks
that loosen their packed and round
seven-thousand-egg-bellies.
This morning is cold, our lines
freeze if left too long on the
water.

Sweating.

A man’s foot

pedals a cast iron cart
overloaded with cages
crammed full of ratty female
pigeons over the curb,
down into the street. A bus,
here from a failed five-year plan,
swerves, its fender hooks and shakes
the man off his heavy cart.
Under momentum of pig-
eon, the cart lurches over
the man’s ankle. The ankle
is limp beneath the flat tire,
and folds on itself as do
our iced lines fold this morning.

two

The fishing was no good, we
were sick from the green water
sliding down the canyon. All
things spun, including my eyes.
I turned around in time to
see the river split open.
I watched a deer lose its hair
all at once. I watched a truck
spin on end like a cue ball.
I watched dogs attack the deer
as it shivered without hair.
The truck exploded on fire.
We dug holes in the road and
filled them with deer hair. We spun
off the bank, into the mud.
There you found green clay, there I
found red clay, my boots still stink.
You slept in a puddle. We
became tired and laid down
ourselves eventually.

three

“Hey umm, hey everyone,” you
say and the moose crashes through
the run you were fishing and
wobbles down the river toward us,
moving fast like telephone poles.
We make it up the slick bank,
the moose lopes over the ce-
ment barricade and onto
the highway.

Someone in a

cargo van stops in front of
the confused moose, blowing
the horn over and over
again.

You say, “If I were

up there on the road I would
put a rock through their fucking
windshield.”
four

“You awake?”

The grass

was dry and yellow because
this high up fall comes fast and
winter is soon thereafter.
“Nope.”

“I could die here.”

The cut-

banks of the small, deep creek lean
over the water.

If one

was quiet and flat against
the dry grass, dangling only
a short length of line into
the water, stunted and hook-
jawed brook trout, orange and white
stripes lining the tips of their
green fins, threw themselves onto
the bank and your heart would twist.
“I am afraid I just might.”

five

In the grass growing in the
shallow bends there are herons
with clothes hangers in their beaks.
This makes casting difficult.
This is as you describe it:

The road across and along
the far bank was packed solid
and slick with thick sheets of ice.
He said he had broken the
reel seat off his rod this fall.
He told me to be careful
and I fell hard, bruised my hip.
It was tough to get my feet
under me.

Six sandhill cranes

were squawking at a pair of
pruning shears sunk in the slough
and rusting up the water.
One of the cranes had been shot,
and as it squawked, its cracked
beak vibrated like the reed
of a feathered and stick-legged
clarinet blowing angry
at junk sunk in a rusty
slough.

I looked up to see the

old man’s feet shoot out and to
his left.

His head smacked the ice

with a hollow sort of plop.
He didn’t move after that,
but I could hear him moaning.
When I got to him blood was
foaming in his ears, and small
owls were picking his pockets.
I cursed away the thieving
birds, propped him up, and asked him
when his birthday was.

He said

“I am sorry, I know the date,
but I can’t tell you it now,
I must have slipped and fallen
on the ice.”

I hung his arm

over my shoulder and dragged
him across the bridge to a
trailer stacked with railroad ties.

While you took and wrapped your coat
around the old man’s shoulders
every magpie in the sky
fell head first into the ground.

six

“I gave it a shot, I mean
I haven’t talked to her in
a week, but I just can’t have
someone all the time asking
me what I’m feeling or what
I’m going to do.

She gave

me a bunch of chances, I
gave her one and that’s enough.”

seven

This morning is bitter cold
like the day the old man slipped
and hit his head so hard on
the ice, like you picking up
the rock, like being burried
in the meadow, like the man
in the oily street holding
his crushed ankle, begging those
walking by for help as I
and the bus move down the street
out of sight, like a deer leg
in a dog’s mouth, like dumping
water out of your boots in-
to the snow, like a lime kiln.

for adam, mike, jason, and peter