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Show Go Love/205 Swallow's from their nest, shred them to pieces-water rats, snakes and the young of their own kind, slit open the belly of a river brown and it all oozes out-hungry for life, they devour all I release the fish and tie ten new twists. A river eagle flies a circle above, they follow fishers, white wings outstretched the length of a boy's arms. Past the grasshopper island, three rocks loom up together from the river bed, they lay together at the mouth of a bend and form a cliff that rises three hundred feet in less than forty river yards. Here's where I caught my first river brown, a dumb-fuck accident. Renee'd tried to make the climb, only she tripped over a rattlesnake and stood frozen on the drop. My line bird's-nested then caught and yanked me and the rod into the hole beneath where the sun didn't shine It was dark in the deep water and cold, and I remember seeing Renee's face up above, how pretty she was, how heart-break beautiful. And I was thinking, yes, its good to be alive, yanked by a fish into the dark hole from whence you can look up to the world of light and know heart break and beauty-know your life and love it. This river, they say its an old place, a living thing that connects us to the world before, it makes no mistakes. I fought my way back up and the air was sweet when I breathed, and Renee-my best love-she said my name loud into my ears, the fish still yanking. And we looked at each other-death by water or rattlesnake-and we laughed ourselves into a pure-D laughing sickness, like when somebody farts in church during the too long prayer and you just can't stop laughing, no matter, not with a gun to your head. We laughed like that, hard and good, and I landed the trout. We ate him for supper and drank all our whiskey and made love under stars where coyote howls sounded like babies crying out lullabies on the hillsides-a good day, a good night. The passage through the three cliff rocks is an onerous climb, the drop-off sheer into a shoal |