Gone Fishing
 
War. And one slippery girl
will not take the bait.
She swims off to stop it,
 
leaves me dangling, thumb-sucking,
plucking patterns from tea leaves,
scanning advice slips from bank machines,
clutching at strings.
 
I'd swing
from the cat's cradle of clouds
spanning borderless skies
if I believed it would catch me
and knit me
into any design;
I'd loop-the-loop,
crossing, re-crossing truths,
 
but it all comes loose. Nets become sieves,
knots become loops.
I feel that old slack -
no certainty to pull taut,
make sing, draw back
that girl-fish
or tightrope out and join her
stitched fast to a bridge across the Tigris.