Modus Operandi

By Rebecca Seiferle

Published September 1st, 2001

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from Bitters

You were never to consider the worm

itself, drowning upon the hook, in a drift

of river or lake, or how it felt

when the barb punctured its body

at three or four strategic points. . .coiled

tightly around the metal, so it would survive

again and again your casting into the distance,

the falling through the air, the shock of striking

the surface. The idea was to make the worm

last as long as possible, though extending its life

was extending its suffering, so you could rethread

its brown vibrant length as it became slack, pale,

and waterlogged, carefully as a rich man threading

his way through the eye of a needle, even sometimes

managing to salvage enough leftover from the mouth

of a trout to use the worm again. Mud puppies

dredged from stock ponds, shimmering minnows,

baby frogs, crawdads, grasshoppers leaping

on the hook – all were means to an end: a fish

in the pan, an afternoon’s art or recreation,

an exercise of skill, an idea of how to work

a stream or pond, and it became a way of looking

at things, a way of being. You remember this

when you hear on the evening news that a man

in a nearby town who molested six toddlers

began by using his own three-year-old daughter–

her wanting to play with other children – as bait.