Every Job Has a First Day

By Rebecca Gayle Howell

Slade was pulling minnows out of the dry river

the day we met. Puddles, more or less, was what

was left. But what could live wanted to and tried,

treading narrow circles, a glide of brittle fins.

He wore those rubber boots, though the sun was

an anvil, and very little wet; he smiled, I remember

that, his nickel smile right at me, his fingers

letting fall the small fish muscles into a bag filled

with yellow tap. I didn’t ask his name, or what

it was he thought he was doing, but we talked,

I listened as he taught me to relax the hand just enough.

They can smell, he said, the oils our pores release

when we tense to catch. You have to believe it,

he said. You don’t mean any harm.

Abortions will not let you forget.

You remember the children you got that you did not get,

The damp small pulps with a little or with no hair,

The singers and workers that never handled the air.

You will never neglect or beat

Them, or silence or buy with a sweet.

You will never wind up the sucking-thumb

Or scuttle off ghosts that come.

You will never leave them, controlling your luscious sigh,

Return for a snack of them, with gobbling mother-eye.