The Poachers Me and mine have lived along this shore since ten years before the dinosaur. Got enough relations in town in fill a church and a graveyard. I guide the summer-folk a little. Someone's got to, the damn fools. They blow each other away, rip up their boats in the shoal water, drunk. But I live for when they're gone. You can almost forget the Seaway and the ugly new hotels in A. Bay. It's quiet, wide and smooth in the evening. Mallard and teal, goose and heron ghost in to light on the backwater. You have to latch up the outboard and pole back into cattails, watch the bats that skim the evening hatch, smoke, talk, and sip a little beer, waiting for the sun to go low. They come out of the northwest, dark against a mackerel sky, straight into the guns, then silence, just the v-wake rom the retriever's nose, like the reflection of southbound geese. You make the run back upriver with no lights and no wake, the motor muffled low. The dog sits in the bowseat. You toss him bits of offal under the jacklight moon. Poem © Dale Hobson. Engraving © Greg Lago. All rights reserved.