Quarter Turn

by MICAH DANIEL MCCROTTY

In Response to William Walsh

When the popping bug struck the pond’s
black surface, he could see water shift

nearby reeds a few feet from the swelling
halo, a quarter turn of something without shape,

like submerged fabric suddenly drawn tight
for an instant. Then silence widened its outward

orbit except the heavy rhymes of slender
meadow katydids and hidden hoppers who exhaled

from splitbeard shelters, a curved swallow’s tail
emptied the sky. The tip of his fly rod remained

unflexed, like a filet knife elevated towards
ages of sunlight, then he lifted it, made rubber legs

waltz and the cork fabrication speak a quick
frog clop; out of the darkness a hunger broke.

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