Page 22

"Fisher" moves through family rivers, runaway mountains, ugly money, denied guilt, and a long seasonal drift from railroad track to soldiering and rain-soaked drifting.

The poem's first-person denials are uneasy rather than clearing, especially around the woman it insists was not killed. Rivers and mountains divide belonging from escape, while streets, oceans, garbage, and money give the world a harsh economic texture. The handwritten pocket-of-a-dream and or-have insertions add a private, conditional layer to the drift, while the soldier and the hobo standing together in the rain suggest two forms of wandering that society names differently but that the poem sees as strangely allied.

'Fisher' braids 'Hindu' rivers 'for our family' with 'mountains for our runaways,' streets 'you / can eat off of,' and 'ugly money you turn / over in places where garbage is the landmark.' The uneasy denial 'I did not kill her when I ran' sits beside the seasonal drift of 'a railroad thack / from June to January,' 'the turn of the drum with / rock and roll to military.' It ends with 'the soldier and the / hobo' equally 'happy' choosing 'to stay out in the rain a little longer,' the handwritten 'ON' and 'or have' threading a private layer through the drift.