Hide and seek

 Sometimes the fish

are all on the other

side of the boat.

One side yields

nothing while

the other holds

a net-straining bounty.

Like summer rain,

in the desert valley,

like gold nuggets

in the mountain river.

Seek and you shall find.

I used to catch

a lot of trout. I could

sense where they

hovered. Or so

it seemed. Maybe

I was just lucky.

But I never hit the jackpot

at the casino or picked

the winning numbers 

n the lotto. I bought

a single ticket every week;

never won a single dollar.

Perhaps I didn’t ask

the right question,

knock on the right door.

I caught a golden trout

in a lake two miles high

in the Sierra Nevada.

It was too beautiful

to kill and keep so I

released it and didn’t

cast another line for

nearly thirty years.

Now I’ve found

which side of the boat

the fish are on and

have asked the right

questions, knocked

on the right door and

what I’ve sought to find

remains a mystery.

As it should be, deep

in the waters of the lake

where the golden

trout swim,

beautifully.