The Prophet's Monofilament

Bozeman, March 1980

for Vern Troxel

Cross-legged on a plastic privy bucket

Dangling flies and fisheyes on light tackle

The prophet’s monofilament

Jigging the steely ice-hole below my buttocks

Fisheyes in a brown vial with feather shards,

Tied horsehairs, and sterile maggots

Tapeworms in a galvanized bucket

Marked BAIT

Perch will strike on fisheyes

Their eyes have tails of white membrane

Silence squirts from my thumb-strike

Above the blood-orange slush

I toss them back blind and burning

Quivering in swim-bladder suspension

Only to catch them again and find the

Clef of my thumbnail above the gill covers

Cross-legged on a plastic privy bucket

Dangling flies and fisheyes on light tackle

The prophet’s monofilament

Thirty eye sockets fixed in the freeze-over

Each thorny dorsal extended