The Best American Poetry 2011 by David Lehman

Author:David Lehman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scribner Poetry

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 heavy 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.

from New England Review

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