Green Drake

By Peggy Hammond

Purist, you spawned poems

with a typewriter.

No clues

when you left,

no answers

embedded in words

you cast as easily

as a lone fly fisher,

stance relaxed in the sun,

cap tugged low

to lessen the squint.

I was the shy trout,

my rainbow sides teasing

you in lusty dreams,

your silver words fluttering,

drawing me closer.

A Green Drake

I could not resist striking.

Purist, you gave line

enough to secure.

Your hard retrieve

taught the curve of the hook

in soft flesh.

When you lifted me in

your hand, my mouth,

sore and open,

pulled but found

no air to breathe.

Peggy Hammond has enjoyed a love affair with language and writing her whole life. Her work often explores the spaces left by loss as well as beautiful details of daily existence. Watch for her chapbook The Fifth House Tilts in the fall of 2022 (Kelsay Books). Recent poems appear or are forthcoming in Pangyrus Literary Magazine, The Comstock Review, Waterwheel Review, Fragmented Voices, Eunoia Review, Scissortail Quarterly, The Sandy River Review, Moonstone Arts Center’s anthology Protest 2021, and elsewhere.