by Billy Collins

    I have never been fishing on the Susquehanna

    or on any river for that matter

    to be perfectly¹ 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 oars² 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 of a painting

    in which that river curled around a bend

    under a blue cloud-ruffled sky，

    dense³ trees along the banks，

    and a fellow with a red bandanna⁴

    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.

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