Poets - Billy Collins continued

Fishing on the Susquehanna in July

I have never been fishing on the Susquehanna 

or on any river for that matter 

to be perfectly honest.  

Not in July or any month 

have I had the pleasure--if it is a pleasure-- 

of fishing on the Susquehanna.  

I am more likely to be found

in a quiet room like this one-- 

a painting of a woman on the wall,  

a bowl of tangerines on the table-- 

trying to manufacture the sensation 

of fishing on the Susquehanna.  

There is little doubt

 that others have been fishing

 on the Susquehanna,  

rowing upstream in a wooden boat, 

sliding the oars under the water 

then raising them to drip in the light.  

But the nearest I have ever come to 

fishing on the Susquehanna

was one afternoon in a museum in Philadelphia  

when I balanced a little egg of time in front time

in front of a painting

in which that river curled around a bend  

under a blue cloud-ruffled sky, 

dense trees along the banks,

 and a fellow with a red bandanna  

sitting in a small, green 

flat-bottom boat 

holding the thin whip of a pole.  

That is something I am unlikely

ever to do, I remember 

saying to myself and the person next to me.  

Then I blinked and moved on 

to other American scenes 

of haystacks, water whitening over rocks,  

even one of a brown hare 

who seemed so wired with alertness 

I imagined him springing right out of the frame.