Winter on the River

There's a man by the river
And he weaves his nets from fibers
With the gnarled up fingers
On his curled, weathered hands
          And he never had a license
          Or a permit to subsist
          Just exists inside a time & space
          that he's content to call his own
Winter howls, the old man shivers
In his shack, he stokes a fire
That he makes from pine and driftwood
As he dreams of fiberous nets and fish
And of summers weaving fibers
Into nets, not unlike spiders
          Not unlike the cold night looms outside
          And weaves him frothing dreams

Upstream on the river,
Lived a brother and two sisters
And they also bought permission
From the riverfish and crawdads
To live through every year.
     Their parents moved away
     Somewhere off of these pages
     Beyond the thrust of pen.
     To forget they way they did
     But did forget

Something sometime happened, maybe,
          Away
     on
                    up
                       the
            river
Not more than 3 years later,
          Now the fish
          they just don't
                come
Not in the same thronging, spawning
numbers they once did--a teeming
shinging, massive mass of simultaneous
breath provision, a silver tooth in
the river's loving smile.
          Not now
          Not in those numbers.
          Now the brother and his sisters too
          Must move off of the page

What of the balding, capped old man
With gnarled, curled fingers
          and the weather in his eyes?

(October 22, 2010)