TO MY FATHER
—John Haines
Last evening I entered a pool
on the Blackfoot River
and cast to a late rise,
maybe the last of a perishing fall.
Light shone on that water,
the rain dimple of feeding trout,
and memory,
and the deep stillness of boyhood.
And I remembered, not the name
of the river, nor the hill
in Maryland looming beyond it,
nor the sky, a late rose
burning that eastern summer;
but the long, rock pool that whispered
before us, and your voice
steady and calm beside me:
"Try it here, one more time..."
And the fly with its hook floated down,
a small, dim star riding a ripple,
and the bright fish rose
from under its rock, and struck.
Last evening I watch a rise
break again on the still current;
quiet as a downed leaf,
its widening circle in the dusk.
____________________
PHOTOGRAPH OF MY FATHER
IN HIS TWENTY-SECOND YEAR
—Raymond Carver
October. Here in this dank, unfamiliar kitchen
I study my father's embarrassed young man's face.
Sheepish grin, he holds in one hand a string
of spiny yellow perch, in the other
a bottle of Carlsbad beer.
In jeans and denim shirt, he leans
against the front fender of a 1934 Ford.
He would like to pose bluff and hearty for his posterity,
wear his old hat cocked over his ear.
All his life my father wanted to be bold.
But the eyes give him away, and the hands
that limply offer the string of dead perch
and the bottle of beer. Father, I love you,
yet how can I say thank you, I who can't hold my liquor either,
and don't even know the places to fish?
__________________
—Medusa
