Can’t resist posting the poem below in tandem with this freshly caught photo my brother Stuart sent me this a.m.– the following  first appeared in New Mexico Humanities Review….

Trout Song

My brother tells me about trout,

How at the hatchery he coaxes them

Up narrow waterways, in central Colorado;

He describes their sleek, innumerable

Bodies, leaves carried forward on the flood

Gills fanning in shallows,

Eyes looking out with prehistoric dignity.

.

My brother shepherds fish,

Paints his dreams in acrylic on fresh paper,

Trims his lamp at night, sleeps warmly under down,

Turns in the waters of sleep, slips free-

Freefalls like a star over incandescent hills of snow,

Comes down soundlessly on thin skis:

Sails without weight or any unmet need,

toward Morning.

.

My brother is trout’s husband;

He slips food into the causeway,

Perceives the spawning, keeps careful charts,

Shepherds pigment into a fusion

With the most delicate movements of his wrist.

I want him to have the fusion

And movement upstream,

The flowering, star-falling joy

Of a love calibrated in days without end.

.

Happy 56th, Dear Stuart– Rock On!