It starts with worms plucked from compost,
a bag of stinky clams leaking over my mother’s fridge.
Driving a hook through an eel’s gasping lips
didn’t go well with my first girlfriend. But I knew what worked.

One night in Key West, I blew half my paycheck on a mermaid
I didn’t, don’t know. In the fuzzy morning, shelling out eighty bucks
for a dozen goggle-eyes, I tossed one over my shoulder — Be free!

The bait lady laughed into her bubbling tanks of blue runners,
mullet, crab and spiny lobster (yes, lobster)
she claimed giant grouper can’t resist.

Desire and cost buzzed under those buggy dock lights,
as they did, years later, after two skunked days of fly-fishing
with my fiancé, when she started asking the wrong questions
about fishing.

Pretending to check her streamer, I tipped it
with a bit of worm found wriggling in the boat’s damp well.
We still talk about what happened next,
we still look at the picture.