By Phillis Levin
To fish from a cloud in the sky
You must find a comfortable spot,
Spend a day looking down
Patiently, clear-sighted.
Peer at your ceiling:
Where a light dangles, hook & line
Could be slipping through.
Under the hull of a boat
A fish will see things this way,
Looking up while swimming by —
A wavering pole’s refraction
Catching its eye.
What will you catch?
With what sort of bait?
Take care or you’ll catch yourself,
A fish might say,
As inescapable skeins of shadow
Scatter a net
Over the face of the deep.
Source: Poetry (February 2016)
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