Among the logjams and flotsam north of Brown's Landing, Negroes,
as black people were then called, fished for channel cat and crappie.

Poor whites, loners, and teenage boys came there as well and threw things in
or pulled them out or hid them in the flooded bushy inlets presumably

ignored by the constabulary. Sometimes night fishing there with lantern
and a box of horrible Marsh Wheeling crooks, dark forms rose near us

like submarines listening, mystified Germans, perhaps, trapped there since the war
and wondering if they should kill us or simply steal our catfish and cigars.

We never knew. We reached out with our flashlights and found the river
meditative, clueless, and unitary as the sky where the huge chandelier

of the universe turned and sputnik scored its winking caveat: "There's more
up here than Heaven, boys. Breathe deep." And so we did, while

below us, we were certain, more than fish circled and tugged at our lines
with dark or bright mouths, with the hunger of all unknown things.