For Jeremy, who
seized it
In
the forest preserve the river has flooded its banks.
Ponds of brown, ice-skinned water fill the
dips
and valleys where spongy earth can absorb
no more.
The
paths are streams, the leafless trees emerge dreamlike,
ringed with graying mud from pools of
sludge
where melting snow joined with
river-flood,
leaving on the forest floor a few thin creeks
and great bowls
of slushy dirty water awaiting transformation,
to evaporate softly into spring, or ooze
to soggy ground.
Suddenly
we see it, a flash brilliant as fire in the center
of a pool of sodden dun-colored mud, a
solitary carp,
glowing like igneous rock at the
earth’s core,
not
knowing it is trapped, can never swim back,
can never leap to safety over dried earth,
broken sticks
and fallen branches, can never return to
the mother-flow.
With
a glance we understand, you step in, groping,
searching through debris, a rusty can, a
paper cup,
you try and try with branches, fallen
winter-dried leaves,
Your
stripped-bare legs breaking thin ice, shivering,
Bare hands reaching, the fish slithering
away, hiding
deeper and deeper in the sludge, desperate,
until finally
you
have it, wrapped in mud-soaked young man’s jacket
now held tight against your chest, you are running barefoot
over rocks and logs and branches, the
dogs suddenly
leaping
after you, chasing splashing joyfully behind you
through muddy water to the high
swift-running river,
to freedom, to life, the captured carp
instantly
swimming
away, that stupid, beautiful, fiery golden fish
simply swimming away and never knowing what
we know:
that you loved its life, and fought for
life, and won.
Alma
Maria Rolfs
November
2002