Poem: Gillnets

Gillnets

I remember as a child picking them out
from the bow, and peering down at currents
moving freely through their masks – the net draped
from an orderly row of cork floaters, near shore.

There a canopy of beeches could dapple light
onto the water’s surface, or space between two pine boughs
slant a shaft that widened undertow
to an aquascope’s beam stretching my fathom,

to where I could spot a sea trout’s glint
in the haze of algae-motes flickering,
or the larger shadow of a salmon gliding
over rocks in olive sea-moss at the bottom.

But I never witnessed the billowing out
and tangling; the settlement upon giving in –
I came always to the hush of fires smouldering.

Oil painting of gillnetting, The salmon fisher, by Eilif Peterssen