Photo of a Family Vacation [1967]

He is a blade slipping on the skin of a trout.

He is a blade and he is slipping and he is a trout.

Skirting the shallows, the screen of sediment.

A hand trawling lazily through a basin.

He is an oar striking surface.

The water-striders scatter.

He is the hook that becomes a pan.

A cut lake bleeds white.

The oil sizzles. Thins.

Michael Prior lives in Richmond, British Columbia, where he works in a bookstore. His poems have previously appeared in The Antigonish Review, Branch Magazine, CV2, ditch and Qwerty.