You Cast Out a Line

You Cast Out a Line

Robert Nersesian

You cast out a line on an empty green pond,
or was it a taut cord across
the gorge of spurious fancy,
or wires flooded with every word
except the ones you need?

They’ll sway no doubt in patience
waiting for the bite, the scramble,
the comfort they might give old men
on a second gin and tonic
in empty afternoons.

You cast out a line to see what would bite
but the bait was too late
to hook the catch of memories.
So you return to meditating,
to plumbing desire.

Sitting on this bank, smelling this stream,
where a floodtide once robbed
the meadow down ways of virtue—
the meadow where you once lay,
the place where you once prayed.

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Robert Nersesian
Poet & Writer

Robert attended the Yale Drama School and New York University School of Business. His essays have appeared in The New York Times and The Washington Post; short stories in Ararat Magazine and 101 Words; poetry in Poetica Review, Eunoia Review, and Haikuniverse; and reviews in The New York Journal of Books. He lives in Washington, DC.

Photography by Matthieu Lemarchal