song my father taught me

a Vermont May dusk so gray it turned green a 
mallow leaf afloat on a black glass beaver pond

dad sank it a wrist-flick a gulp the stone gone
too amongst trilliums & ferns & jack-in-the-pulpit the

deep green & the grape vines gone native—a green
rowboat a caged white lightbulb dangling on a freight elevator in a

paper mill the dark air sinks more deeply in the light 
a metallic fish presence dad’s black lunchbox

dented & heavy he fished in black pools
where perch swirled yellow the sawdust’s choking sweetness

in his workshop under the bandsaw’s gray evening whirr a
Black Ghost fly trawled in black bitter glacier lakes for

rainbow trout a metallic fish presence I think a-
mongst the silver birches & black glassy rocks the birches

grasped in roots my dad’s ruined black glass memory a 
landscape without a definite article to its name

Jack Hayes
© 2010