trout fishing part 2--a requiem

I cast off

it’s only seconds before
I feel the weight of your
rotting corpse

floating alone in

some nightmarish limbo that takes up the space
between Oregon and Montana and back some
where in California
at the end of my rod

maybe your best stuff came from this hole in your head left there by a good-bye .45

where my hook hangs its hat like home

I tense behind the weight

I don’t know how to write this poem

I don’t know anything about fishing

in America
or any place else

but I can feel you sliding off

lost back into nothing

like your book sales