Crayfish
The catch is simple—a wire basket
flung port-side, dripping
a pink necklace from the fishhead
you snagged this morning
from a bank of dew and sage.
You show me the claws
too wide for escape. Red gold
lifted from pungent steam, you shuck
curled tails with your thumbs, ask
why I read poems. You're bored
with lines that say the blue water
shimmers under a pan of sky, when all
it means is that the guy has fallen
in love with the girl; why
don't they just say that? Sometimes
a poem means what it says—
these are my first crawdads
ever, the first I have watched
you prepare, too long
inland, landlocked as salmon.
We ask each other how we live,
inquisitive hands in gear, mine
searching the shadows of words,
yours, plundering another deep.
Relish what is found here:
morsels sweet as lobster.
Sometimes a poem means what it might—
the crawfish, some small but brilliant
metaphor for what swims between
our diminutive worlds, two people
soon about their separate
calling, where stippled kokanee
split the mirrored surface
of memory. These two will go out
in a mist, boats rocking
underfoot, the sun all morning
preparing some new place, the water
blue and shimmering
beyond all reason.