Trout Fishing With My Son Outside Decorah, Iowa

A poem for summer

Kinugawa River, north of Nikko, Japan, July 6, 2025.

Trout Fishing With My Son
Outside Decorah, Iowa

The Zebco reel and four-pound test
with one split shot close to the fly
made it cast like a real fly rod,

the weight at the end of the line
making up for the line’s lightness
and the backhand cast letting us

land the dry fly, a perfect cricket
with a green dot, made by a local,
just where we wanted—a still spot

on the near side of a fallen pine,
a pool half in shade half in light,
where the brown we imagined

saw legs pressing on the surface,
a black thorax floating above,
a chance to leave hunger behind,

the redd below, her eggs,
safely covered with gravel,
her nest against the current.

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