Suppose a Trot Line

by Andrew Wells

I thought you, fishing a limit,

walking home in chert-dust dark

catching your boot-toe every rut

 

or so. That log road deeds the creek

to us. It’s alright. I thought it, running

water or wind in the scrub oak.

 

If widow moon, then dog years, the way

you walk down, your hat set for traveling,

dreaming backward like paper lace

 

in the same Summer rain.

Hardly a day goes by. Hardly a far field,

feldspar flecked in sandstone

 

when sparrows fall out of the creek.

I thought you coming home

for a cold mattress and folly

 

playing feet in the current, eddying

along the clay path between me

and the rumpled painter’s hat you wore.

 

Not pinebox. The campfire and the map

you wouldn’t stop drawing.


ANDREW WELLS is from Piedmont, AL. He currently lives in Iowa City, IA, where he is a student at the Writers’ Workshop. A couple of his poems have been published in Forklift, Ohio.