Poetrie: Fishing on the Susquehanna in July

About

Fishing on the Susquehanna in July

by Billy Collins

I have never been fishing on the Susquehanna

or on any river for that matter

to be perfectly honest.

Not in July or any month

have I had the pleasure--if it is a pleasure--

of fishing on the Susquehanna.

I am more likely to be found

in a quiet room like this one--

a painting of a woman on the wall,

a bowl of tangerines on the table--

trying to manufacture the sensation

of fishing on the Susquehanna.

There is little doubt

that others have been fishing

on the Susquehanna,

rowing upstream in a wooden boat,

sliding the oars under the water

then raising them to drip in the light.

But the nearest I have ever come to

fishing on the Susquehanna

was one afternoon in a museum in Philadelphia

when I balanced a little egg of time

in front of a painting

in which that river curled around a bend

under a blue cloud-ruffled sky,

dense trees along the banks,

and a fellow with a red bandanna

sitting in a small, green

flat-bottom boat

holding the thin whip of a pole.

That is something I am unlikely

ever to do, I remember

saying to myself and the person next to me.

Then I blinked and moved on

to other American scenes

of haystacks, water whitening over rocks,

even one of a brown hare

who seemed so wired with alertness

I imagined him springing right out of the frame.