Three poems
/
By Todd Campbell
Let the Fish be the Fish
November 2021
I stand at the island in your kitchen,
chop chestnuts and celery. Turkey necks
simmer on the stove. It’s been years
since I was here and I thought we might
talk. Not about what happened.
What happened after. Instead I sweep
peels and parings into the garbage
while you stalk one step behind,
pushing shut cabinets and drawers
I’m not yet ready to close.
August 2022
We pitch and yaw off Shackleford Banks
where horses roam wild, descendants
of herds that swam ashore from ships
foundering in rough seas many generations ago.
Everything we catch is too small to keep.
At the store, fish are laid out on ice,
bright-eyed and unfamiliar, drawn
from an ocean different than the one
I’ve come to know. Let the fish be the fish
you tell me when I ask how to cook
the one you chose, which we drop
into hot oil, piece by battered piece.
October 2023
It’s a surprise to swim together this time
of year in the Atlantic. The water, cold
to enter, welcomes once we surrender
to the tidal pull, the roll and tug.
We set our feet, time the surge to ride
the biggest waves, as we have done
since childhood on beaches farther north—
Rhode Island, Cape Cod. Later, I drift
in and out of sleep in a chair
low to the sand, while you stand
waist deep to cast where gulls
trouble the ocean surface. Then you turn
to show me the fish you’ve just reeled in.
Large, alive. A flash in the bright sun
before you unhook it, set it free
to swim again in the wild green water.
Suspension Bridge
By the riverbank, aspen leaves tremble
at the quietest whisper of moving air. Upstream,
a dark line of thunderstorms. The fast-rising water.
House of Glass
For years we walked slowly on the shore,
eyes downcast. Collectors after treasure,
scanning—always scanning—for the flash
of jewel against sand and wind.
The way broken things catch the light.
From a distance, we must have appeared
as mourners or mendicants. Looking back
I see how little we took in.
Todd Campbell is an American writer based in Seattle, Washington, where he has lived for the past three decades. A speechwriter by trade, he got his start in TV and radio news, then worked as a freelance print journalist. Once a professional musician, he currently also works a mosaic artist. His poetry has appeared in Pangyrus, Reed Magazine, The Shore, Watershed, and elsewhere.