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Patrick M. Pilarski

Brook Trout

Strange how you hurt something to see its beauty; to see it pulse at the end of a hook, red spots / blue corona on a dappled bed of olive green; to see it wriggle free from your hands, dart frightened down the rapids and hide between the rocks, gills waving in the wet breeze. Steel-cut and frantic. Stream-blown and buffeted. Quiet in the rocky gurgle. Watching.

breath curls
in the evening chill—
one more cast

The haiku was previously published in Frogpond, XXXI:1, January 2008