You see a lightning bug
and think
Shooting star!

Trout rise to cadmium-yellow
sprawls of bug-body and gossamer wing
hatching at NBA playoff time
as they do every year,

and slurp them off the brimming surface.

I cast to brown trout in the birch pool
while uphill somebody stays
indoors and watches the game.

Madison Square Garden
reaches me
through an open window.
The players, uniform on the T.V. screen
in blue-and-red, teal-and-white,
swarm to the basket like feeding trout.

—Richard Tillinghast

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