“A Day’s Catch”

by Laura Bonazzoli

(After the photograph by Berenice Abbott)

Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. 

–Henry David Thoreau, Walden

Is the day’s catch the herring, surfaced, 

frantic for the sweep of tides to swell

again their fallen gills? 

Is it the pleasure of the men, eyes intent, 

muscles flexed against the net, 

twisted and heavy with death?

Or perhaps the photograph itself, 

the culmination of your long 

and ardent morning’s labor— 

not this thin print—I mean that instant 

I’m imagining for you—for them—

of pure and frenzied light. 

Thoreau said every creature is better alive 

than dead, but you—and they—

are part of nature, too, 

swaying on narrow boats, squinting in 

the moment’s allocation of sun

at breathless herring.

Laura Bonazzoli’s poetry has appeared in dozens of literary magazines, including Connecticut River Review, Northern New England Review, and Steam Ticket, as well as in four anthologies and on “Poems from Here” on Maine Public Radio. She has also published personal essays and fiction. Her collection of linked short stories, Consecration Pond, is forthcoming from Toad Hall Editions. She is online at laurabonazzoli.com.