Produced by Maine Poetry Central and Dennis Camire

This week’s poem by Bruce Guernsey of Bethel sheds light on how we see, or fail to see, our world. The poem appears in the collection “From Rain: Poems, 1970-2010.”

 

Ice Fishing

By Bruce Guernsey

 

When the doctor beams his line of light

in the water of your eye,

can he see the stars, the glisten of your tears?

 

I pull a bluegill from the dark,

its belly pink, the winter moon.

On the ice, it flops just once.

 

The eye of a fish is flat

for seeing under water.  Out here, in air,

nothing it sees has depth.

 

Summers, the pond a sky,

you can’t see in because of the light.

All you see is sky.

 

This afternoon it’s ten below,

the land, the ice I fish through, white.

I stare in the hole, jigging the line.

 

Dennis Camire can be reached at denniscamire@hotmail.com

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