From The flowering plants, grasses, sedges, & ferns of Great Britain by Anne Pratt, 1905
Digital image courtesy of the Biodiversity Heritage Library
A rainbow trout
still on a wooden board
slick from water &
next to him silver hooks
& a door to a field where
trees bear crab apples some
yellow some green God didn’t
want to make himself into anything
specific & when man wraps his hand
around a throat one way of seeing it—
an invitation back to the field &
the crab apples back inside the tackle
room the rainbow trout still
on a wooden board & next to him a wall
of hooks & plastic flies that led to the spot
it now rests about to be sliced through
cleaned then eaten because man is hungry
& God isn’t a self or any one thing &
that’s how I want to forgive my rapist—
someday in a field next to crab apples his
body still slick from the water he was born with.