Thursday, January 23, 2020

Elegy by Natasha Trethewey


Elegy

       For my father
 
I think by now the river must be thick
with salmon. Late August, I imagine it
 
as it was that morning: drizzle needling
the surface, mist at the banks like a net
 
settling around us — everything damp
and shining. That morning, awkward

and heavy in our hip waders, we stalked
into the current and found our places —
 
you upstream a few yards and out
far deeper. You must remember how
 
the river seeped in over your boots
and you grew heavier with that defeat.
 
All day I kept turning to watch you, how
first you mimed our guide’s casting
 
then cast your invisible line, slicing the sky
between us; and later, rod in hand, how
 
you tried — again and again — to find
that perfect arc, flight of an insect
 
skimming the river’s surface. Perhaps
you recall I cast my line and reeled in
 
two small trout we could not keep.
Because I had to release them, I confess,
 
I thought about the past — working
the hooks loose, the fish writhing
 
in my hands, each one slipping away
before I could let go. I can tell you now
 
that I tried to take it all in, record it
for an elegy I’d write — one day —
 
when the time came. Your daughter,
I was that ruthless. What does it matter
 
if I tell you I learned to be? You kept casting
your line, and when it did not come back
 
empty, it was tangled with mine. Some nights,
dreaming, I step again into the small boat
 
that carried us out and watch the bank receding —
my back to where I know we are headed.

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