LATER

Your hands in the water, hauling in your nets, your fish

the morning is a strangled cry in your throat

it is not enough now he appears to be a distance

now he has found his father, your fingers are

bare and tattered, like the edges of that lake

of ochre, your empty nets, when they call you and

say that he has gathered in this death, but

in your ears the crowing of the cocks, of constantly

that one night when you would know nothing of love

now they cry out around you and you don your robe

smooth the white shirt, leap into the maelstrom

with what his fish-body has ever proffered you.

johnirons