Two poems
Laura Farina
Twelve Lines for Spring
It was raining hard.
The threat of lightning hid chastised behind a cloud.
A man and his limping dog investigated.
They’d lost something in the weather.
Both turned to me and said, “Why can’t you be
more like your uncle? Welcoming? Inviting confidences?”
“A collector,” I agreed. “Like a customs official
telling stories when his shift is done.”
The rain for all our talk hunched shoulders and continued.
What was lost remained lost.
The words were the wrong ones at the wrong time.
We crumpled and discarded in the receptacle provided.
Fish
That one time
we caught a fish
silver scaled
after the sound of your voice
saying—this lake is dead
not like when we were kids
there are
no more fish here—
And then the rod
curling like a fern
and when you reeled
the fish in it was
not large like
we remembered—
the toothed fish
our fathers caught—
but it twisted on the line
like a busy signal
and we were relieved.
Our mothers in the small cabin
on top of the hill
heard our adult laughter
as it echoed
from the lake
the rocks
smiled at each other
and thought for a moment
of the photographs
in the album labelled
1990-1994
