Treefish.

The river will at first look brown, smell brackish. It will be a thing of summer itself, though the temperatures are low. The surface will pucker where kissed, shiver out ripple after ripple into the silvered spaces between the imaged banks. Then, in the branches of the reflected trees, a fat flip of silver, and another. And the river, though still brown, will turn to a sky of flickering fish, evening-slow and late-spring-gleeful. Even the brown will come to life: a catfish will skulk out of camouflage, lurk over the sand and shadow, show himself the leader of others, fat and grey-brown, bellying over the bottom, pushing against the current in a long strange line.

It will be there at the edge of a bridge that is hanging over an inverted world. It will be living where least expected. It will be the weary eye's evening meal, the cynic's flat rebuke.

The bright fish will flash their sides until no light is left.