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Playing for the Pickerel
One August Night
by J.P. White

After awakening in a blackness
so thick I was afraid I would
knock against it should I budge,
I grabbed my guitar,
slipped out the window
into the muggy cornstalk Ohio night.
I climbed into my rowboat
anchored in cattails,
nudged away from shore,
dipped the oars into the
light-green waters
opening oceans around me.
Just the sound of splashing
carried me cooler toward the
middle shine of the pond
where I began to strum my 6-string
until bluegills and pickerel lay
charmed beneath me,
dozens of giants hovering in a circle
as the moon rode over
the pond’s ribbed bottom
and helped me pick out the melody.
Always before, the music
had dropped me lower
down the neck, somewhere deep
in the unfinished song,
but that August night, I plucked
all the notes ever heard in my head.
There was no separation
between sadness and euphoria,
no obstacle between the life
running over the frets,
and my future death
laying down its ghost.
Alone in a rowboat,
I spun beneath the eye of the world,
an insect on a splinter,
something strong and resplendent
like a gold bug fully emerged
from an apple-tree knot.
Lit up with glitter,
I counted stars
careening from clouds,
played all my music for the pickerel
that swayed forth
from the tangled penumbral edge
of the pond.

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