& Streams

The Lake

Day and night, the lake dreams of sky.
A privacy as old as the mountains
And her up there, stuck among peaks. The whole eye

Fastened on hawk, gatherings of cloud or stars,
So little trespass. An airplane once
Crossed her brow; she searched but could not find

A face. Having lived with such strict beauty
She comes to know how the sun is nothing
But itself and the path it throws; the moon

On Munsungun

My father in the aluminum stern, cursing
another fouled blood-knot: all the shits

and fucks as integral to the art of fishing
as the bait-fish, little silver smelts

I sewed like a manual transmission,
the same inbred order and precision

needling the leader through the ass,
out the mouth, through the jaw, out the nostril

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