Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Something (even human voices) in the foreground, a lake


Something (even human voices) in the foreground, a lake

A definite mountain (the upper with tableaux), foul water.

The air was back of the house, my knee sweet, intervening roses and
heavy-hanging apricot boughs as the morning advanced, an imposition of
isolated will upon the deck chairs, the docks and fragments (even human
voices), the watery glitter of bits of food afloat on the water's surface. That
hole, the size of fifty cents in someone's childhood. You always called
"Here, little fishy" when you dropped the orange and green flakes into the
round opening. I often looked for a dead one. Even a light bulb fooled me.
"You are glad it wasn't what you thought it was," you told me. You were
accurate but on another morning, I noticed, while sitting in a chair, listen-
ing to you speak a halting Italian on the borrowed telephone, a small silver
fish with clouded eye lying back-to-back with its reflection. Anything is in-
terchangeable with a small net. You know that.

One of my favorite poems by Kathleen Fraser

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