Picture of the Author with Vice President by William Wenthe

Picture of the Author with Vice President

That’s me on his left. If neither one of us 

looks comfortable, it’s because I said 

I’m sorry to hear about his heart. 

A small machine, he says, sends tiny sparks 

in there, to pace the flow of blood. 

Some people will dispute this photo; his office 

has denied it’s me; but I have to believe 

I am in the picture. It’s awkward, yes, 

for we don’t know each other; 

and if he’s known as a man who keeps 

public secrets, I’m not known at all. 

Even so, he and I share something 

that we cherish, deeply, which is our love

of trout. On his Wyoming ranch, he owns 

a trout stream for himself. When I raise 

the question—How’s the fishing?—he will rise 

to the subject, and we will have grown 

a little closer, having now disclosed 

a passion no one, having known, lets go. 

And he, too, is a man who knows cold blood 

of trout cares nothing for who you are. 

Nor do they care who owns the land 

their water flows within: So long 

as land and stream stay clean, they live. 

Because I must rely on public lands 

to find—weighed out in the flash 

of a trout’s brilliant scales—that cleanly order, 

I’m concerned about his sympathy 

with those who call such places “undeveloped.”

But I know better than to say as much 

to a man who’s so well versed 

in the rhyming of ecology with economy— 

abstract nets that hold so many tangibles, 

such as meadow grass that filters silt 

so cutthroat trout may have clean beds 

of gravel for their spawning redds; 

or the English teacher whose hopes 

for a pay raise float on the promise 

of a growing tax base—in other words, 

the new sport coat I’m wearing 

in the photo, bought for this occasion. 

Still, I want to believe in the heart 

of a man who would fish a barbless fly 

for a trout, and let it go; who would spend 

that much time to be where trout live, to step 

so softly in their stream, they do not frighten.

So I am going to tell him a story 

about the Sacramento Mountains of New Mexico, 

and a man who lived there. By all accounts, 

William Myers knew the land, but owned 

none of it. Had no money, so in order to live 

in the mountains, he bartered work 

for the privilege of staying in 

other people’s second homes. 

One day, he drove his ATV up a ridge 

to scout the most likely route to run a pipe 

to his friend’s house. He lit a cigarette, 

studied the forest floor, as he’d often done 

for fresh deer lies, bear scat, a crop of mast 

that might draw wild turkeys in. 

Whether it was a spark from the ATV 

or the cigarette, he didn’t know; but he was sure, 

he told police, that it was he who caused the fire. 

That night, a glowing orange blemish on the sky; 

by next day, a dry mist with a taste 

of wet paper. Nine thousand acres 

of forest he had hunted, ponds and creeks 

he’d fished—the bell-note of hummingbird wings, 

the raccoon crooning to her pups—gone up 

in a surf of flame; sap-laden pines burst 

like the improvised gas-and-bottle bombs 

he’d learned to make in the army. Helicopters 

dropped fire-retardant chemicals on a woods 

he’d loved but never owned, and never meant

to burn. They fell in scarlet plumes, like blood 

that must have sprayed from his skull 

when he stood in front of the gun 

he held in his own hand, and fired. 

—Well, it may have been the words 

like blood, and skull, and gun, 

that made the men in sunglasses bring 

our conversation to a polite, efficient end. 

Or it could have been my agitation 

over a man who took responsibility— 

who, as his scribbled farewell letter read, 

could never live with what he had destroyed.