By the creek,
Where two trees entangle in
The embrace of drunk friends;
Firmly rooted,
Yet just a bit apart;
Heads put together
Don’t let the sun through.
Somewhere near one’s roots
Is an ant hill,
Busy with little red and black linearities.
Almost boundaries marking where one’s territory begins
And another’s ends.
Near the other is moss,
Closely cropped like shorn hair of a young boy.
Slightly wet,
Mostly dry,
A green canvas spotted only where his stick dug into it.
Green universe and brown black holes.
He sits by the green,
On a short four legged creature made of plastic and fabric.
This creature mercilessly digs out the brown,
Unearthing more than what’s on the surface.
He wields a long wooden pole,
Limber yet unyielding line fastened to one end;
With a beguilingly dangerous hook on the other,
Overlaid with life from under the earth,
To ensnare life of the water,
to feed those living above both, in air.
An almost green shadow of persistent hair covers his jaw,
The moss on his fair, red skin.
Hair cross hatched, overgrows onto his face,
Not letting the sun through to the eyes.
years of cold and
The blue of his eyes is akin to the one he dips in to hunt.
His spare body, rests on the four legged creature,
One bare foot on the earth,
The other hangs off the crevice,
Almost touching ample sprays gushing below.
A fish or two unflinchingly give into his grasp,
To be stored safely in his basket.
Infinite balance.
.
.
.
And as sudden as death,
A creature too big for it’s own appetite,
Latches onto his worn pole.
He jumps from the surety of four limbs to two,
The hunter challenged by a worthy prey,
Cannot but adapt his stance.
With the force of this jump,
The four legged creature falls to its side.
Two limbs, covered with moss,
Taste the freedom of air;
Two lazily sprawl across the spacious ground.
There, two spindly limbs,
Pull hard to upend the monster of a prey.
Legs dig harder,
Beyond the earth;
For support from an army unexpectedly, almost forcibly, recruited.
Few enquiring red and black ants,
Drawn closer by the commotion,
Climb up the ripe legs of the hunter.
“Is this food for our winter?”
Asks one to its brother;
And bites into a flexed vein.
“Aaaaah”
The hunter screams in agony,
One hand reaches to dislodge this unexpected attack,
And swats dead the one who dared.
The fish recognizes the fleeting chance at freedom,
And pulls at the ever so unyielding rod.
Earth, the unbidden army,
tired of a single limb’s insistent push,
Slips out from underneath,
And with all four limbs in the air,
The hunter falls on his prey,
The prey falls on the rocky riverbed ,
And both spill blood
Till the cold blue is a warm red and flows away to meet the sun.
