Poems by Natasha Trethewey, the newly named poet laureate.

ELEGY

For my father

I think by now the river must be thick

with salmon. Late August, I imagine it

as it was that morning: drizzle needling

the surface, mist at the banks like a net

settling around us — everything damp

and shining. That morning, awkward



and heavy in our hip waders, we stalked

into the current and found our places —

you upstream a few yards and out

far deeper. You must remember how

the river seeped in over your boots

and you grew heavier with that defeat.

All day I kept turning to watch you, how

first you mimed our guide’s casting

then cast your invisible line, slicing the sky

between us; and later, rod in hand, how