The Concerns of the Air-Breathing

The fish seem to have slipped away
frightened by the swirl of red mud
from banks collapsing into flood. It was
a harsh winter.

They waited patient under ice
breathing slow without bubbles, while we
cursed and shoveled snow and dodged
falling branches,

the concerns of the air-breathing, while fish
lived in stasis behind their frozen gills
trusting in the eventual thaw, betrayed at last
by too-sudden spring,

swept out to sea or suffocated in silt.
And still I find myself leaning out
over gunmetal waters and searching for
a bright reflection.

Collection available! Knocking from Inside