Ice Fishing in My Subaru

Six lines out at Canyon Ferry
with jumbo perch stacked around
two hot holes like cordwood,
while the other four iced-up
and got cold at noon maybe
because the fish stopped thinking
that maggots looked like shrimp,
or became afraid to eat the eyeballs
of their kin who lay with bloody sockets
twenty feet above and stared with
empty rage and gills that fluttered
like the wings of fallen birds
in search of air.

Six lines out at Canyon Ferry
in a wind-chill, pecker-cold,
that makes Montana feared
in soft-cheeked cities with no eagles
echoed against the farthest range of sky,
and here I sit a rugged mountain-man,
in my multi-purpose, air tight,
high-tech-ice-house Subaru,
heater-humming-ice-fishing igloo
imported from Japan.

Six lines out at Canyon Ferry
from where I wait for three
perch-eye baited handmade ice rods
to dip as suddenly as silent herons
might spear fish through my windshield,
and in the rear-view mirror
my maggot-line doesn’t mention perch
as I check the left-side mirror
where I fish with salmon egg
and crawler bait until the right-side mirror
reflects a pastel wash of blue
through which the sun contrives
to make the lake-snow glow
as if illuminated from below
hole number six and I forget the other five
while this accidental beauty
happens.