WORK BY ELIZABETH MYHR


Carp


                                           Between old hulls and piling rust,
anchors, huge chains, nets of yellow and orange,
greases and smells of creosote, forgotten cargoes;
the slabs of light break and move
suddenly into the shaft of water
eddying against the yard-railing,
the cool, dark light of morning
gleams in luminescent movement,
lowering, partaking in
beams of houseboats, dock rails,
hulls reflected in blue lines,
visual fields of broken green shadow,
and below, below,
only what plants,
the carp with their dead-penny scales,
lumpy mouths,
older than centers, older than poetry,
slowly fanning into the channels--
bridges, bridges everywhere.


                                                 Alaska Quarterly Review,
                                                          Vol. II, No. 3 & 4, Spring/Summer, 1993.