First Prize: Mathilda McKenzie, fishing in the stream

Mathilda McKenzie 

First Prize - 2025 Tower Poetry Competition, 'Roots'

fishing in the stream

"before he went to cast stones at the stars

                                                my father would take me to still lakes

   where we'd sit with baited bream bated breath

                                                   and shovel silver shillings in our nets 

                                        until the sun sunk"

He explains

his laboured lips lost around the syllables,

stuttering the noises of a rookery.

         "every thursday every third day 

                                                                                      my old man would catch a salt-crust siren

                with marbled eyes garbled eyes

                                                                                                         and a famine of open gills 

   big enough to make even the stern dance

                                                                                          we'd parade these tiled tails tired tales from the dock 

                                                                back to our wren red roof 

                                                                                                                                             i was sinewed enough to carry an earthshaker back then 

                  before my wife passed life passed so suddenly

                                                                                                                                and the wrinkles set in"

His withered speech is an unexpected minor chord

among the starched birdsong of monitors 

and the legato of nurses’ chatter

conducted by euphemism-fat tongues.

  "now they sit me in the chair by the window by the widow

                                                                                                                                                                                                             leave me without an ear 

                                                i'm sure they forget my heart is still fleeting still beating

                                                                                                                                and they ask how i remember that old bream old dream

                                                                                                when so much of the rest is rubble 

i tell them: 

                                                        in winter a tree loses its leaves"

His hands realise themselves

and he coaxes one up to his chest

smiling a mouthful of dice 

as the memories shoal to him

                                                            "but never its roots”