Barbara Duffey

Fishing

When the dry air so briefly lit killed
each leaf earlier, the sound it made
was a trial snap of a castanet, crisply 

quiet, like like. How separation sounds
like jointure, nature’s haptic irony.
I can feel the dry grass of the hill 

ten miles west of here under my hand,
the history of the ground thrust up
in a palette of oranges displayed 

by the mountain like stolen watches
from inside a coat. I hold the flies
in their plastic box. I too sense 

danger in the shadow leaning over
to snatch me. Pleasure’s duplicity
is that it ends. A body needs 

a mountain to remind it
we are more like a plain
than expanding space. 

In my headlamp’s light I saw each drop
in each line of rain descending to the dark,
wet ground, slippery with fresh-dead leaves.

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Barbara Duffey is the author of three poetry collections, including Simple Machines, which won the Washington Prize, and A Wasp in a Fig's Womb, forthcoming in 2027. She has received fellowships from the NEA and the South Dakota Arts Council. A professor of English at Dakota Wesleyan University, she lives in Mitchell, South Dakota, with her son.