Elegy ["I think by now the river must be thick"]

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 heavier 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.