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Billy Collins - Fishing on the Susquehanna in July
Work rating: Medium

	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.
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