|
From the May/June 2004 Issue of Gray's Sporting
Journal
Catfish, Like Me
by Norman
German
A three-pound willow cat,
big, as willow cats
go,
though not much respected
even as a catfish
but
really beautiful:
black and white marbled
like milk and
oil mixed—
belly slick as a soapy chamois.
I lie in
the dark and think of him
on the bottom of the
pond
fifty yards from my bed,
rummaging for a meal among
nature’s
daily castoffs, killings, or decay.
He does not
read Kafka,
wouldn’t know Emerson from an earthworm
yet,
self-reliant fish-mole,
he finds his way on the dark
bottom
and hardly ever stops to wonder
why some nights
give him more light. |
Norman German, a professor of English at
Southeastern Louisiana University, has published poetry and short
fiction in literary and commercial magazines. His first vivid memory
is of catching a catfish on a cane pole.
|
