Hope

3. Fishing

Did someone further down the Missouri
snare my bamboo fishing pole,
maybe by accident, and later
when the river slowed and lowered,
sit down calmly at its side and dangle
a line into the cold steady flow,
hook a fish I could only dream about
when so scared I'd dropped the pole into rapids
from a railway bridge up near Niobrara?
It is always possible that someone
will triumph in another's fears
and it could be this optimism that drives us on
even if we only discover it years later
when hankering after an idea of hope.