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.