Sturgeon

Ancient-angled, more bone than fish,
cold muscle slabbed from the crater's nether muds.
Silt sifts at the edges of his age, pockmarks his diamond
skin. In the lake's varved ribs he's an outcrop, called lung.
His coppered dream, furled like a dead map of this place,
shows the curved distances that used to mean shoreline,
trapline; flecked with gold where homes once rose to
meet their families, awake with walleye and wild rice,
their fires snuffed out by a swollen river, dammed for
hydroelectricity. Embarrassed, on higher ground, the
people moved on, the lake a geography of forgotten things.
In a greening frame, under the covers of his benthic bed,
his jaggedness dissolves into prayer and soft litter. Come,
he says through his suckermouth; gasping, ugly.
Lie down with me. Fill this room.

Steven Slowka