ICE FISHERMEN THROUGH A LIBRARY WINDOW

They pass, ice fishermen with nothing to say. 

I know nothing of their stooped forms 

dragging behind sleds of supplies I cannot name. 

One by one, they wander onto the ice, 

to their colorless world of white and white,

until bundled into a distance only they can read.  

Onlookers question their motives aloud,  

fail to understand a hunger that can't be kept, 

the cold drill of it.  From here, a strange light 

makes the flakes look like drifting ash.  

One fisherman, again retracing his steps, 

fades out, as if taken by a brute grief; 

a few sit alone—crouched like prayers, 

devoted to the solemn, to the surfaces, 

to the coldest blood.

Tara Bray has been published in Agni, Poetry, Southern Review, Colorado Review, Puerto Del Sol, Crab Orchard Review, and Iron Horse Review. Her first book, Mistaken For Song, was published by Persea Books.