~inspired by Natasha Trethewey’s “Elegy”
where rivers slough beneath the bank,
round the stones, eddy in the slow run
home—
an alluvial fan of sediment and sentiment.
My mother needed to say goodbye
to the rivers—Bitterroot, Yellowstone,
Flathead, Blackfoot, Bighorn, Gallatin—
where her fly once teased the brown and cutthroat,
once cast into the light of my father.
Morning mist sifting off the meadows
like steam rising from the coffee brewed
over their camp stove.
Wading hip-deep in the currents,
their lines whipping through the weather—
whatever that day offered.
Catching a silver glimmer then
releasing, as if each fish was a child
held for the instant.
If I was there, it was as a trout—
a fluorescence in motion. The stream
coursing, coursing past.
A river seeks weakness, the unrooted—
My mother had brought her fly rods,
renewed her license. But the rivers
were thick with memory and she is an old
river—resisting, then changing
direction.
