Trying to Hook the Moon
Poet - by John Reinhart
I’ve gone soul searching in quieter lakes—
it’s hard, you know, catching those slipper
silver devils in the daylight in the middle
of a city while people mill about, cars honk
and lights flash. You have to be quiet,
almost sneak up on them. They feed
in the shallows, in dark corners, in shadows
where bumblers never look. They eat
the trapped sunlight, lost moonlight, and
forgotten starlight of dreams from ages past,
lighting their opalescent scales to shimmer.
If you blink, they look like quicksilver
reflections on the surface. Stare harder,
longer. They appear, sliding in the dark,
moving from burrow to reeds and back again.
Defying physics and tradition. In every shape,
every size, many underdeveloped or misshapen,
invisible, others weighted down to the muck.
It’s a patient task, an unforgiving moon-eyed
search, reading to streams only to find
souls slip through your fingers and away.