Fish Fall Marc Douglass-Smith Fish fall, cold October, hardwoods shedding leaves over copper marsh water and my father's eyes dropping a fathom and more, following a slender thread to where jut-jawed bullheads wait, a few lonely perch. One day (my father tells me) an old bomber buzzed the lake, bay doors opened and the fish fell in silver shimmers downward. My father watched a thousand fingerlings bristle in the water, their spring gills bellowing as they woke from wind and sky. Quietly we lower again our weighted, tenuous lines as if to inquire of darkness, deep water, the soul's silty bottom. With oars drawn up, we drift aimlessly. We remember years of silent trawlings, the dead water, the lifted rare and glittering fish.