Tim Whitsel
SELF-ARREST
we come to the river alone
while the dew is still on the ridges
the river paraphrases her past
a balm fledges in the hemlock branches
we come with aches for marred lands
marred lives while garlands of moss and wolf
lichen insinuate the genetic strands of relief
here grief can come to the water
with its bridle unbuckled reins dangling
we stand to our thighs swaying
for the sun for ridges marshalling
their dark feathers as if primal
we come scarring and scarred
El ROSTRO ESPECTRAL
Water weeds enact their finicky
dances in the reflection of cirrus clouds.
Cancel climate is what you face
bass fly fisherman. Some years take the lake
entire, meandering down drains to expose
its vertebrae,
your boat’s flat bottom notwithstanding.
Hook, play, release that writhing bastard.
Clouds hover unconvinced.
Jet boats rooster tail
from warm shallows to the margins of the cold inlet.
Gear fishermen.
Treble-hook spinner, Yum dinger, or gallant angling?
Fishing prejudices drift trivial as pipe dreams
while climate refugees take to the seas
in rafts probing kinder sunrises, a better land.
Dream coat, ground cloth, flak jacket, burial shroud.
As for you and your flat bottom boat
you will beseech your lurking prey again. You cast—
tribal, prescient magistrate.
You offer flamboyant lollipops
of feather or a sliver of dyed rabbit fur.
A young buck’s skin
tanned then sliced thin into strips you might use
tying flies, to lace a child’s shoe.
Or to repair the frayed net where
you and your bass meet.
Aghast.
Reeled together like penitent disbelievers
of the ghost face in the clouds.
TOWARD DUSK FALL
Late September in Oregon.
The sun can make you ripe
but will not make you grovel.
Preferable, since you lean more
sweetgum than sweat lodge
colored by the coming chill.
Retrievers, huskies and doodles
at the base of trees in the dusk.
Trademarks and elusive texts.
Your sigh is a signatory presence.
Passing, you are mostly water.
Crowns totter long after seeds.
A harvest moon rises, arraying
shadow bars on the river tonight.
You are sidelong late September.
You are mostly water, passing
the sun, the trees, the cell.
Small wonder you ever sleep.
CAST
A tree gains notability from wind.
The moon
mints borrowed silver.
It may take months and months
weeping to make a father—
How many dry-swept years?
Dreams surf in on twelve breaths
a minute. He is the scarlet nickels
a Japanese maple drops in one night—all
it can stomach of autumn.
Other wards raise chants
to a rusty moon. He throws
keys into a drawer drawn
outside by a stitch of slate turkeys.
What can he know beneath
his forefinger touching his own chest?
A father probes a dream.
He will roast which ancestral roots—
He pastures aches as large
as Friesian horses.
He tosses the horizon for one key.
So many hungry inbound storms.