Bob Hicok Catch and release They keep showing up -- the image of a man sometimes missing his left arm, sometimes his right when he waves from across the valley -- followed by a gate that walks away and frees a few horses to be inspiring again -- I keep trying to fit the images into poems that don't want them -- like a board I should take back to the saw and shave to size with the whirling blade -- so this is their life free and clear of my will -- my mind released from my mind telling my mind what it is -- I'm reminded of the years I tried hard to see a brown bear -- it never worked -- but when I gave up trying, I still didn't see a bear, but the bear I didn't see was a pileated woodpecker on a low branch of a lightning-struck maple above the West Fork of the Roanoke River -- a cow licking the udder of a cow licking the udder of another cow -- you appearing as old as every wrong choice when I turned to you in the car yesterday -- but when I looked away, afraid of your ebbing and then back, you seemed as young as the thought we might roll down any of the hills around us, stand up dizzy and screaming to do it again -- the whole thing -- from start to finish -- my best anchors have no chains -- as if it's only the falling through that holds