A poem for your consideration

Here's a poem I'm working on that relates to my last post. I figured I might as well throw this up alongside it.

When you see the mayflies

So you see, this is how we find them.

An eye on quiet places, seams

and the breaking of the thermoline;

in spaces unseen, bodies hidden in the shimmer

of riffles, the uncertain meeting

of uneven coursing waters.

Feel the steady weight

of the stream against your leg

like a child's idle pressing,

at once support and opposition. Feel the gentle suck

of the eddy on your downstream side,

the pull of needful space, the refusal to be empty.

This is how we go after them,

uncertain propositions, the chance

of finding what lives to be hidden.

Rod tip down, straight at the bloodknot,

that spectre where leader and tippet disappear,

presage of the trailing hook, the hackle

and the hurl of a blue-winged olive

riding currents with the flotsam.

This is how we find them, our own

bodies submerged, all eyes on the line

dividing air and water, what rides

the current between them.