Eeling
By J. Trent Nutting

I gloved my hand in swatch of gripping rag,

Reached into the bucket’s column of captured

Seawater where eels were jellied black frags

Turning into themselves, rose-knotted

To escape selection. The chosen eel,

Picked not from any measured arithmetic,

But from dumb un-luck and blind reaching feel,

Writhed its muscled length, vined my arm with slick

Of slime and foam, like hand-shaking the sea’s

Darkest corner. Circled hook sunk home

Into triangle of jaw, the rigged eel

Etched a black-question mark against dome

Of dawn when lobbed into the cut.

It played out line, swam deep, a shaft of sinewy

Black swallowed in water’s gut below the glut

Of cawing gulls. Without a glance I knew

That the bucketed knot had un-knotted

Itself; that the re-straightened eels, fear-free,

Bobbed like black sticks, released

To rise at last on their own buoyancy.