Otherworld, Underworld, Prayer Porch. David Bottoms

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 knew what they were — those colored balls of light circling

      the radio tower — a red ball, I remember, vaporous,

      almost translucent, and a green and a blue, floating clockwise

      around the tower.

      My aunt had phoned in the middle of the night

      to urge us into the yard for a look.

      This was the summer of UFO reports, but if they spooked my old man,

      he didn’t show it.

      At eight or nine I was already in a panic —

      everything seemed a sign.

      Oddly, though, no one ever mentioned that night again,

      and how reliable, really, is the memory?

      Now when I try to force my mind back, it runs straight

      to the bulbs on a tree, those Christmas lights

      glazing our dining-room windows.

      The Grocer’s Tackle Box

       Not all dreams need to be realized.

      PATTI SMITH

      My obsession with gear

      comes from a grandpa who rarely caught a fish

      but kept in his tackle box one of every lure

      he ever sold in his store.

      I was especially drawn to the potbellied Bombers,

      deep runners meant for pike and walleye,

      but also the rainbow Rattlebugs, the pink doll flies trailing

      yellow boas

      loved by crappie and bass,

      and the speckled plastic worms,

      rubber frogs and tadpoles, the fat, tangerine Hula Poppers.

      He kept his tackle box behind his cash register, tucked

      behind cartons of bills and tax receipts.

      As a boy I could walk by the Coke box and feel its draw.

      Someday, he kept saying, he’d take me fishing

      but never did. That was okay.

      To prove the promise sometimes outweighs the fish,

      he’d often let me open that box and thumb