The one
cruel thing I did today
was tease the hungry, got a rise
out of
cool-blooded prisoners,
promising a meal I could not make.
A wave of my
hand at the
hatchery,
pretending to throw food,
cast a shadow on the waters
that the fingerlings tried to eat.
When the surface of the sluice-pen
ran calm again, there, beneath
my unsettled reflection—the eyes
of a thousand trout, staring back.
William Keener’s work has appeared in poetry
anthologies such as Fresh Water: Poems of Our Rivers, Lakes and Streams, edited
by Jennifer Bosveld, and Sacred Stones, edited
by Maril Crabtree. His chapbook, Three Crows
Yelling, co-authored with poets Bill Noble and Michael Day, won the 1999
National Looking Glass Award sponsored by Pudding House Publications. In 2005, the Marin Arts Council awarded him
an Artist Grant for Poetry.