ice-fishing ii

my father & a feisty perch on a lake, near st. albert, jan. 2010

skeleton of water hemlock, near st. albert, jan. 2010

field grasses by a lake, near st. albert, jan. 2010

It is August, and I have neglected posting for two months now, I know. After I defended my PhD fieldwork proposal in mid-June, I have been summering at home in Edmonton in preparation for going to Siberia for aforementioned fieldwork. I've been making things & taking photos & thinking about things, but not really sitting down long enough to do much with them. This is a recently finished-after-many-months, very unseasonal poem.

* * *

ice fishing II*

arching sedge bows low on the

shoreline, weeping into the snow.

slice my finger open on the auger,

cut skin gaping, a flared gill.

your lake lies in winterkill,

a thousand trout white bellies up

& bursting like cold willow

stems, flickering in the dark water,

snowflakes frozen to the sand.

there are two worlds here, in

the water: one obsidian sharp,

one soft as amber. from land

i call, how are you, down there,

father? but the voice i hear

is wasp’s nest hollow, awake

and gasping for air. how

do i lure you, now, out of

this dark season? where weeds

sway as if shadows only in the

memory of bent light? o

father, it was just a leech**,

you know, who sucked a small

hole in the sky’s white flesh, let winter

bleed out, suffuse into sun –

* * *

*ice-fishing I is in the March 2008 archive (scroll down for March 13th entry)

** the leech is part of a dän k'è story i heard in the yukon, & you can read about a lovely film that incorporates the story here.