Eel Ladder

At the weir, night unbuttons its wet coat, and the river shows the pale machinery of longing. Water combs upward through black plastic bristles; each rung shines like a thought the moon forgot.

The eels arrive as loosened lengths of darkness, small ropes of weather, handwriting made of muscle. They test the spillway with their listening skin, then choose the narrow grammar of ascent.

Below them, the dam keeps its concrete opinion. Above, the reeds rehearse a softer country. Between those voices, they climb by touch alone, silvering whenever a lamp finds their backs.

By dawn the ladder is only a damp rumor. Swallows stitch light over the sluice gates. Somewhere upstream, the current opens like a door, and the river receives its lost sentences.