October 2018
I don’t think coherently about anything until I have picked up a Lamy fountain pen and let the ink glide across an unlined page in my Rhodia notepad. My family, poetry, my long-running workshop, and my standard poodle are the passions of my life. My latest book, Gravity: New and Selected Poems is now a reality; I plan to travel with it this year, and hope to meet many V-V poets along the way.
Teaching the Fish to Let Go
Tim casts flies.
He lures each fish
with hand-tied bait.
what they swallow,
he says, is a lesson.
Susan calls, we talk
about death. About
my father’s last walk
by the ocean, Camel
between his lips,
whistling his morning
prayer.
Her father fell
down the stairs again,
Susan says, and then,
he died in the hospital
where she had tried to die
the week before, where
the doctor pressed two
fingers to her wrist
and said, you didn’t swallow
enough.
Tim is careful with the fish.
Like a mother tending her child,
he pulls the fly from its mouth
and lets the fish slide
back into the water.
He watches the circles, satisfied.
He’s taught another fish
to let go.
from Mansions, Event Horizon, 1990
© 2018 Donna Hilbert
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