In the Deep Channel

William E. Stafford

Setting a trotline after sundown

if we went far enough away in the night

sometimes up out of deep water

would come a secret-headed channel cat,

Eyes that were still eyes in the rush of darkness,

flowing feelers noncommittal and black,

and hidden in the fins those rasping bone daggers,

with one spiking upward on its back.

We would come at daylight and find the line sag,

the fishbelly gleam and the rush on the tether:

to feel the swerve and the deep current

which tugged at the tree roots below the river.