Childhood Photo Poem by Glenn Bagshaw

At one time my father and I
would rise just before dawn
and travel
in dream-dark woods,
through the shadow of a vast witness,
on and on, pathless,
to a lion-legended spot
to fish.

Once settled we would watch
the bobbing floats and in half-light
I sometimes caught
with early eyes,
no fish, but the glimpse
dancing in the shovelled surface
of something quicker than currents,
something impossibly sad
and oh so empty:
my own face adrift in water…

Years after, my father's cast line
was fouled forever in reeds,
the reeds that bend in cold winds,
the reeds...

I then looked in the family album
and there
with all the suns that have
ever gone under, was this
man and boy who had simply
gone fishing….

Yes now I recall.
There were two drifting faces
lost in water.