Fishing

Here is a fisherman without rod or net. His shadow swims beneath the water yet he is warm and asleep in a faraway bed. Moonlight washes lake waves. Here is a breath, there is a breath. He sees the breathing water. His daughter, long drowned, surfaces to kiss his forehead. He turns in the snug bed and smiles. The dreaming fisherman sinks deeper into the darkling depths. Forms rise through the heads of those who cannot sleep. Bodies of light and dark struggle in the fathomless. He whimpers. tosses and turns. Ghosts fetch up on a shelving shore, reach for him, beg him to remember how it was before the lake woke up and saw itself afloat in a heron's eye.