July 24th, 2000
At Night On the Lake
In The Eye of the Hunter
**by John Engles
Excerpt from: Big Water
Published by Lyons & Burford, New York, NY
We thank Nick Lyons for use permission!**
That night, drifting far out
in the center of the lake, I watched
the star; later,
I shone my torch down into the eelgrass
of the perch beds, and saw the fish
stunned into thrills
and trembling of fins.
I shone the torch onto my wet hand,
the wet sky-reflecting floorboards
of the boat, onto the sky itself,
the beam widening and thinning
into the white fabrics of mist. That night
I thought I rode the center of all
the widening darknesses
to the rimstones of the encircling earth.
Later, by starlight seeing
over the whole blue surface of the lake
trout feeding on mayflies, seeing the cross
and recross of rise rings, the slow
opening ripples from the bright
tiny insucks at the center,
I came to think how it might be
my boat hung there in a net of fire,
but however it was, the light
had begun its long reach, even now
long afterward, still rising,
widening into the body of the sky,
through the mists into the last
meeting of light beyond which
I remember this or not, beyond which
even then fearing my life
I wished to burn. ~ John Engles
About John Engels
John Engels has taught English Literature at
St. Michaels’s College in Winooski, Vermont for many years. He
is the author of five books of poetry, including The Homer
Mitchell Place, Vivaldi in Early Fall, and Weather-Fear, for
which he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. He is recognized
as one of America’s finest poets. He lives in Burlington, Vermont.
Originally published July 24th, 2000 on Fly Anglers Online by John Engles.