If you wonder
what that clicking
whizzing shirring
is, it’s me, fly-

fishing over
this abyss in
hopes of snagging
pike or grayling

or some deeper
biolumi-
nescent grouper,
flinging forth my

shiver-feathered
fly like prayer
arcing sinking
through the air in

search of any
water down there—
some sustaining,
tensile surface

with a face for
spirit to be
moving on, my
slow and opal-

eyed salvation
salmon waiting
silently as
thought below it.

This article appears in January 2024.

Amit Majmudar is the author of Black Avatar: and Other Essays and Twin A: A Memoir. He works as a diagnostic radiologist in Westerville, Ohio.