She hung them on a yellow stringer:
a handful of Kamloops, a couple of Kokanee,
wet with lake water,
three hours old.
The breeze that snaked up
smoke from her cigarette
turned the trout in slow pirouettes
against the long unbroken lake.
Her smoke twisted up into the rain,
flattened out, dissolved,
and the lake drank in the downpour:
sheets of stone and steel
and backlit green,
virile green, unbending.
They had lain awake the night before
listening to the owls
and the loon on the water.
He was sure she was
expecting them to fuck,
but they were his sounds —
the cool air was his, the creaking of pines
all betrayed now, was his.
And today only the mouths
of the fish were warm.
Indian red, rose madder,
pale pink gaping half-moons
that still sucked at the hooks
in the unbending green.
Too bleak and beautiful 