Predacity

water-cobbled rocks
of white and gray,
pummelled by time,
hewn round
by the licking caress
of the water's rasping tongue,
dressed in moss,
green and tender;
dark eddys
where never sun has smiled
beneath a ledge,
black and forbidding,
an ebon void
full of danger,
a den of darkness,
and in it,
silvery-sided with ivory teeth,
jewel-eyed, he waits to strike,
he is the deadly, fearsome pike.

A blue hole in the Little Missouri River
Arkansas
1976