Great trough scooped out by giant finger of ice
And filled with essential fluid.
What sparks of elemental life--
Suspended in the prehistoric freeze
For ages gone--obeyed the warming earth
And copulated, blind and joyless, stirred
Through aeons of form by God knows what dim urge,
Before these waters teemed with finny grace?

Dawning half-light sneaks across the Point,
And breath of wind makes ripples in the glass--
Then sudden blaze of liquid fire ignites
The lake and smites me blind. I swing the boat
To put the fire behind me, thread the line,
Attach a golden spoon with trident hook,
And whip the graceful rod. The wicked lure
Wings through arc of flame until it drops
With eager plash to ravish fecund water.
And now the slow retrieve, again the cast
In time-lost repetition, easy motion
Of hand and arm, the body balanced against
The gentle rocking, mind in soothing neutral,
The flashing lure, the splash and slow retrieve,
As if the ages were not and this were all,
While sun continues noonward.

Sudden life electrifies the line,
And fish is joined to man (or man to fish)
By cord of love and death: mysterious bond
That neither fish nor man can understand,
But seemingly essential to them both.
The fish is strong, I give it line at first--
It fancies victory and squanders strength
Till, spent, it splashes weakly by the boat,
The largest rainbow I have ever seen,
Too big for netting. Holding taut the line,
I reach with free hand for the flaring gill
And lift aboard the glittering yard of life;
It flops upon the boards in desperation,
Golden lure suspended from a lip,
Perhaps reflecting on the greed of fish.
I try to work the hook loose but the trout
Reacts with fury, as if it wants to keep
The piece of gold obtained at such expense--
My hand bears wounds that woman's teeth could make!

A summer vision grips me then: not fish,
But vibrant woman lies between my feet,
Ideal progeny of fish and man,
Full-breasted springing into timeless life
As true as for the Greeks who saw her born
In beauty from the blue Aegean, weak
And gasping in the unfamiliar air.
A blow with butt of rod, a slash of knife,
And Aphrodite patiently awaits
The mounting board's eviscerated splendor.