Skip to main content
Poetry Northwest Logo Mark

Illuminating poetry since 1959

Posted on | Poetry

Bone Hooks

by

This is how my body stands in the time zone
of a river: my father on one side with my son
to my other riverbank. It is years ago but still
here. We are part absence, but this is how it is

we live on the Meade River channel. It is there
I listen to fleshed chords flow on either side
bright mornings feet are placed into ice melt.

We reach with hooks for whitefish, for Arctic
grayling to catch on curved bones set in water.
This is how it is: bones of our feet are hooks
set to water. We are arctic songs along ripples

larger than my father’s death, my son’s birth.
We hold a time in the river—this is how it is
three hooks each find their part of the catch.

Bret Shepard is author of Absent Here, which won AWP’s 2023 Donald Hall Prize and was published in the Pitt Poetry Series. His collection Place Where Presence Was won the Moon City Poetry Prize.

[Return to Top]