water feels like the voice
of a great absence.
Across the wide cove the lights of the bait shop
flicker like insects,
and, finally, a few stars struggle through the shredded clouds.
Silence, then, exceeds the darkness. Silence.
You grasp the gunwales and lean forward,
you catch a long breath.
That gnawing in your chest sharpens and spreads.
Your grip tightens.
The rustle in your ear is something grand and awful
straining to announce itself.
Your jaw trembles. Out of your yearning
the silence shapes a name.
Question on Allatoona
The moon was in the sky and on the water at the same time, and the sky
filled with stars. A dock jutted into the cove,
and the banks were heavily wooded and dark, the whole cove sizzling
with small sounds. From out of the woods on the far bank,
an owl called twice, paused, then hooted again.
Beyond the cove the lake widened quickly,
and a mile or more away
lights of the fishing camp flickered on the surface of the lake.
Our tackle box sat closed on the floor of the boat.
Far behind us on the porch of a cabin, a guitar
backed up a mandolin. We listened
instead for the question with no answer,
watched the moon on the water, then the moon in the sky,
and when enough silence had passed,
the frogs let go in great bellows up and down
the edge of the water.
There were no bass in that cove. No lunkers,
not even the pretense of a fish. Nobody even bothered
to untangle the backlashed reel.
Photo: Captured Gator, Canton, Georgia, 1960
Every few years a small one
would nab a trotline or waddle out of a cove where a Boy Scout
was grilling burgers. Crowds then, and theories —
somebody’s pet from Florida
flushed down a toilet or tossed into a creek.
Where I was raised anything unusual became a spectacle,
like this four-foot gator
held by Lee Spears behind the South Canton Trading Post.
Years later, in Florida, I paddled over
dozens of them in Lake Talquin, their eyes on the water
like small balls of moonlight.
Not one ever rose to the boat, or even stirred,
which makes me wonder now
why this one, jaws wired shut, keeps gnawing at me with its desperate eyes.
Blessings, Yellow Mountain
I could have killed the snake.
I had a pistol in my belt, a 9mm, a Smith & Wesson,
accurate, deadly, and I was a good shot.
I could have easily killed the snake.
But Jack and I were walking his turf, walking federal land,
and he coiled so placidly
across the oak root, not even lifting his head
to acknowledge our passing.
I could have killed him with one shot. Nobody
would’ve heard. We were miles
from the nearest road.
But Jack wasn’t even curious, and kept pulling me
up the path, sniffing the ground, lifting
a leg to piss on a stone.
I studied the moccasin for a moment longer —
the fat and terrible muscle of him, his black scales rippling
while a small wind
brushed his back with shadows.
Beautiful, sure, but I thought better of inching closer,
then followed the tug of Jack’s leash.
Over the top of the ridge
sunlight sliced in layers through the trees,
and suddenly out of the branch quiver,
an antler moved.
2
We look at the world once,
in childhood.
The rest is memory.
LOUISE GLÜCK
Spooked
If they spooked my old man he didn’t show it,
only lifted me onto his shoulders and leaned against our back gate.
We stared across the woods,
the cornstalks rising out of our neighbor’s garden.
Nobody
