Poetry
Award Winning Poetry from our 2021 Poetry Contest
The Father Your dead father dogs you like the white mutt that roams along the fishing holes and walks the edge of gravel roads, sometimes
2021
at a trot, most times slow, but with purpose, muscle and sinew protecting old bones. The father in silence with pipe clenched between his teeth made a fog of every place he inhabited. What did he understand of you, late arrived child, when he hoped the burdens of fatherhood were done? The white dog looks deep within you, his eyes the blue of your father’s favorite Rapala. You take his poles, his tackle box pulled shut with an old belt and sit at the shore. You cast and try to think past what you harbor in you—the strange alchemy of love and duty, and the anger that rises from it, thick as the dog’s hackles when it senses something hidden in the lake’s fog.
Jennifer Fandel
56
WISCONSIN PEOPLE & IDEAS
