I am the one that doesn't get away.
Their blood tumbles with promise, teeming
quicksilver too luminous to stay;
I am their whole catch, landed and streaming

rainbows. Those others they dream of--the charmer,
the saint, my father's magnificent son--
circle the wormed hook, but sensing harm,
slide on forever. I am the one

trailing their bait through the film of the ideal,
rising to this flawed light. No more, no less,
than actual, like a death, I am the real
one, the waking, the caress.