Brad Reyes © 2004 All Rights Reserved

Mountain Trout

Through slanted
afternoon waterlight
a green muscle coalescence
of snow and sun and granite
rose to my fly.

Now fading to silver
under the kitchen bulb—
        light turns the windows
        into walls,
        the night held back beyond—
she gapes
in my chipped
white sink,
guts piled blue
across the drainhole.

Snow drips down
the mountain shoulder,
through the ¾" pipe
out the old faucet and
up the thumbscraped spine
between the ribbed walls of flesh,
still protein-pink,
and out over the upper lip-bone
lined with its fine futile teeth,

taking down the drain
the flaked scales and blood

back down
the night hill

to the dark
trout lake

 

John Miller
Copyright © 2004

 

John Miller is a teacher who lives in Southern California. He is co-proprietor of the Family Travel Haiku website.

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