Ann DeVilbiss wrote this poem while spending time on the beaches of Lake Michigan, just north of Onekama, Michigan.
What the Fish Know
The morning lake
is a calm blue nothing,
soft horizon, reaching,
early light cutting
through small waves like
a net scrimmed over
the shallow places.
Our feet move,
pale clumsy giants, and
even the hungriest fish
skirt away, shy back
to the murky gloam
among the green reeds,
wait for
better quarry,
as if they remember
how we take them
inside our cheeks like
sins or secrets,
as if they remember
how fish drown in air:
first blood beads up
along the edges of the gills,
the neck flecked pink
with blood’s reaching,
then white with the foam
that gathers along
the heaving sides.
Their scales are
sharp as teeth when
we weigh them
in our hands.
Ann V. DeVilbiss has a BA in English from Indiana University. Her work has appeared in Crab Orchard Review, Day One, and elsewhere, and is forthcoming in Pangyrus and TAB. She is the recipient of an Emerging Artist Award from the Kentucky Arts Council, the state arts agency, which is supported by state tax dollars and federal funding from the National Endowment for the Arts. She lives in Louisville, KY. Visit her website, www.anndevilbiss.com.
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