Weekly Poem: ‘Elegy’

By Natasha Trethewey

Elegy

For my father

I think by now the river must be thick
      with salmon. Late August, I imagine it

as it was that morning: drizzle needling
      the surface, mist at the banks like a net

settling around us — everything damp
      and shining. That morning, awkward

and heavy in our hip waders, we stalked
      into the current and found our places–

you upstream a few yards, and out

      far deeper. You must remember how

the river seeped in over your boots,

      and you grew heavy with that defeat.

All day I kept turning to watch you, how

      first you mimed our guide’s casting,

then cast your invisible line, slicing the sky

      between us; and later, rod in hand, how

you tried — again and again — to find
      that perfect arc, flight of an insect

skimming the river’s surface. Perhaps

      you recall I cast my line and reeled in

two small trout we could not keep.
      Because I had to release them, I confess,

I thought about the past — working

      the hooks loose, the fish writhing

in my hands, each one slipping away
      before I could let go. I can tell you now

that I tried to take it all in, record it

      for an elegy I’d write — one day —

when the time came. Your daughter,

      I was that ruthless. What does it matter

if I tell you I learned to be? You kept casting
      your line, and when it did not come back

empty, it was tangled with mine. Some nights,
      dreaming, I step again into the small boat

that carried us out and watch the bank receding —
      my back to where I know we are headed.

Natasha Trethewey was named U.S. Poet Laureate earlier this year. She has written four collections of poetry: “Thrall,” “Domestic Work,” “Bellocq’s Ophelia” and “Native Guard,” which won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize. Art Beat will have a conversation with Trethewey later this week.