Opposable

Kingsbrae Gardens
St. Andrews, NB

Opposable

If the leaves.  If the singing fell upward.  If grief.

For a moment if singing and grief.

If the blue of the body fell upward, out of our hands.

If the morning held it like leaves.

                                                                If the Rise of the Fish

                                                                Jane Hirshfield

I have to ask if men fishing are jealous

of the osprey who from far away

can see to take the rainbow trout up

into the air in such swift independence

it’s possible the fish considers it's suddenly

wings, that on each side of her is new

body.  If men, looking up, mistake

the fins for feathers and pull their vests,

jealous: all that time tying flies, the sigh 

tightening the weight of the knot that will be  

tested against the feather, the way, while making

each tuft of fawn hair (don’t worry,

it was stuck to a barb of wire lining

the old property, he’d walked

the boundary last spring and it was

a wisp in his imagination, a certain

fly he was godding through under the lit

magnifying glass) he’ll think: the one

I’m going for is swimming right now

and really what’s the difference

between my fingers stroking this

string and her fins stroking her stones

that rub her belly erotic (are fish

erotic?) and time her surfacing to

the dark shift in shadows, old soul

she is, knowing the water, the silted milt,

the cool/warm exchange of rain or snow

these so many seasons we’ve been

knowing one another?  Does he think

that?  Tying flies?  And all the way to

the pond, his worn path, his patched hat

and vest, his tested line?  What can be

known of this or cared for in the eye

of the osprey, owning her own piece

of sky for the length of time it takes

to feel the shift in shadow beneath

her breast feathers (isn’t this knowing  

known before it’s seen, and isn’t it in

the bones, the ones that cage grace-

fully our aching failing hearts?) and aims

straight and faithful for the shadow,

that will, when it’s lifted, transmigrate: become,

muscle, become scale, become a reached for

creature the fisherman in his whole

lifetime imagine he alone lifted from the water's
grip in the form of a fly, and breathed on it

and watched it come, finally, briefly,

to life?

Eastport, ME