Fishing in Winter

Ralph Burns

A man staring at a small lake sees
His father cast light line out over
The willows.  He's forgotten his 
Father has been dead for two years
And the lake is where a blue fog
Rolls, and the sky could be, if it
Were black or blue or white,
The backdrop of all attention.

He wades out to join the father,
Following where the good strikes
Seem to lead.  It's cold.  The shape
Breath takes on a cold day is like
Anything else — a rise on a small lake,
The Oklahoma hills, blue scrub — 
A shape already inside a shape,
Two songs, two breaths on the water.

He continues to ponder And his wife moves next to him. She looks. They look at themselves Looking through the fog. She has a meeting she says in about Thirty minutes, he has Something too. But still she has Just stepped out of the bath And a single drop of water Has curved along her breast Down her abdomen and vialed in Her navel then disappeared In crimson. Unless they love Then wake in love Who can they ever be?

Flap, flap went the mind of the bird Who flew out of my grandmother's attic Like heat in the creases Where air used to be. One week Of summer was all that house Could take of my brother and me. Years later, After she died, someone, my aunt I Think, arranged for her to be driven Back to Kingfisher, Oklahoma for the Funeral.

Two or more strands twisted together, Oxides and baser salts, admixture Of carbon, metal of lash and scourge, Strung like a virus, barbed intervals, Stapled by hand to bois d'arc poles, Woven by machine, "devil's rope" Of vast interior plains, Of meadows bruised by their own Amplitude, barbed wire of a thousand Different kinds, undulating loops, Half round and square--Reynold's Web, Preston's Braid, Meriwether's Cold- Weather Wire, Shellaberger's Long Zigzag, Walking Wire, Curtis's Ladder, Visible Lace, Arch and Leaf, Descending Beads, Staple Barb, Open Diamond Point, Sproul's Twins,

Poems

Fishing in Winter

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Fishing in Winter

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