Dick Altman
The Midge
Tuesday and dearest plays god
again. As if staring down
from heaven, she conjures
a barbless midge so small,
she dons surgeons’ specs
to see it as goggle-eyed fishes do.
Not much to look at, she admits,
but on the right sunny day,
in the right breeze, in a stream
flashing froth, in a teasing duet
of current and fly, a voracious
Rainbow on Rio, Chama
or Cimarron will heave itself
in fury at the midge,
as if life itself depended on
the next gulp. Dearest and ‘bow”,
two temptresses, will struggle,
one taunting the other,
one to grab the prize, the other
to dangle it, until the trout
fins off in watery dudgeon,
wondering, like dearest,
how the damn thing got away.
Dick Altman writes in the high, thin, magical air of Santa Fe, NM, where, at 7,000 feet, reality and imagination often blur. He is published in Santa Fe Literary Review, American Journal of Poetry, riverSedge, Fredericksburg Literary Review, Foliate Oak, Blue Line, THE Magazine, Gravel, The Offbeat, Haunted Waters Press, Split Rock Review, Almagre Review, The RavensPerch, Beyond Words, Sky Island Journal and others here and abroad. He is a poetry winner of Santa Fe New Mexican’s annual literary competition. His first collection of poems, Voices in the Heart of Stones, is being considered for publication.