Poems by Nat Bottigheimer
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On Trout
by Nat Bottigheimer
From Canary Fall 2022
Nat lives up the hill from Harry’s Brook, a tributary of the Millstone River in the New Jersey Piedmont. He grew up on the north slope of a glacial moraine. Saltwater creeks are his favorite waterbody.
A trout prefers
The easy flow
A back eddy’s seam
Or the lee of a rock,
And where conjoined currents
Concentrate the uprising
Emergers or downfallen
Spinners, hapless
Ants or nymphs that have lost
Their grip on the stream bottom.
There they scan up and out at
The foam buffet, or
Fin in place mouthing
Each mote of the stream’s
Tumbling litter to discern treasure
From trash. Knowing
Where they like to lie
Alters not at all
The enigma that creatures
Bedecked in water-lily pinks and
Seurat stippling,
Birth of Venus blossoming or
A Chagall coral orange
Can be right there yet
Unseen in the dappled
Limpidity. If you have
The grace to cradle
One of these in your cold,
Wet hands you
Will feel an urgency old
As creation not to escape
But to return, to a place
Invisible yet in the midst
Of everything, a power
Of current made flesh.
Don’t see me, a habit
Constant as breath.
© Nat Bottigheimer