North Prayer

I give thanks for the fish my man-family greedily steals; far over the limit though not beyond what we can eat. They gloat over sizes and granddaddy stories, whine about aching feet and I know we could have afforded another meat for our supper, but even if our bellies are filled their souls will only be stilled by the rhythm of the fly rod, the focus of the deep pool and softly-loud stream. Is that not need? I ask the corn mother, and yes, she says, men with unhappy day jobs and concrete between their toes seek to be gods on the weekend pursual of innocent bucks, the rocky silence of wilderness and brash backslappings of boys.

Where else can we be men? they ask, and sky father answers, All places under me—but they do not hear. This thankless ungrounded society deludes them, tells them men take and take and power over and beat down and conquer, and they carry this harsh unhonoring with them, from degrading their mates to chasing the antelope until their aging bodies throb, then go back to the cabin full of cheap brews and steaks that died afraid, where they will scrape out their gut-souls with more granddaddy stories and feigned fireside anger. Men? I ask, and as His bearded breeze sweeps through the aspens, they quake with Her laughter, they carry away my whispered prayers of gratitude as I stand by the tail-gate, enraptured by rainbow scales and cold eyes trapped in a Ziploc—brown trout, fingerlings, rainbows, people earth-darker than I say that their wisdom comes from always knowing which direction home is.

Even in my father’s oil-stained hands the hooked trout twists strong as a snake, as a bent willow, seeking the water, the upstream. My boy-family is as out of place in cities, in Wal-Marts and strip malls, but where is their fight to seek the ground? Ten minutes ago this fish was slipping through the stream beside me, unaware, and now lies on my plate floured and browned. I never enjoyed eating fish, and I still don’t. When they take fine-boned meat within themselves, what do the men-boys learn, I ask? Plastic, uncaring, downpayments and empty screens—how much more can my father take, how does he keep his gills fluttering so long away from the hills and the oak? With this, the trees murmur through mud in my jeans, the wind coaxes answers from my creek-washed hair. And I give thanks, for warm muscle sliding down my throat, for my father’s fumblings, for the quaking aspen, for the lies that drive us to seek the intensity of these long hauls and payless days, this condensed, desperate forest loving.