Moonlight Oracles

I.

We squatted among the cattails
on five-gallon buckets flipped and
flecked with cement older than me.
The country pond winked
in the moonlight
as we waited for channel cats
to fetch the chicken liver
wound around our treble hooks.

We waited with the crickets
and the bullfrogs.
We waited in the darkness
of a deep summer night,
which is no darkness.

II.

You spoke to me through the darkness,
and what was true and what was not
true of all you told me, it hardly matters.

III.

Our casting rods arc
toward the stars
like prayers.

Somewhere up there
two rusted bells hang on the silence—
waiting for an answer
from the other end,
a chime, a signal that
the night is yet young.