cheech

Fishing on the Susquehanna in July

I have never been fishing on the Susquehanna,
or on any river, for that matter,
to be perfectly honest.

Not in July or any month have I had the pleasure
-- if it is a pleasure --
of fishing on the Susquehanna.

I am more likely to be found
in a quiet room like this one --
a painting of a woman on the wall,
a bowl of tangerines on the table --
trying to manufacture the sensation
of fishing on the Susquehanna.

There is little doubt that others have been
fishing on the Susquehanna,
rowing upstream in a wooden boat,
sliding the oars under the water then raising them
to drip in the light.

But the nearest I have ever come to
fishing on the Susquehanna
was one afternoon in a museum in Philadelphia,

when I balanced a little egg of time in front of a painting
in which that river
curled around a bend
under a blue cloud-ruffled sky,

dense trees along the banks,

and a fellow with a red bandana sitting in a small, green flat-bottom boat
holding the thin whip of a pole.

That is something I am unlikely ever to do,
I remember saying to myself
and the person next to me.

Then I blinked and moved on
to other American scenes
of haystacks,
water whitening over rocks,
even one of a brown hare

who seemed so wired with alertness
I imagined him springing right out of the frame.

--Billy Collins