snow
squeaks underfoot.
I walk head down, muscles
tense against cold’s sting.
the air bites tonight.
moonglow
paints this landscape
locked in winter,
blue light brushed
by ten below.
hollow thud of hoof
filters through flaps of my hat –
dark shadow of moose
stretches for willow branch.
we both freeze.
she listens
for crunch of boot,
I for another heavy step.
steam floats across the path –
she has spotted me too
more than air, moon, stars and sky
more than trees, snow and cold
more than food, errand, she or I
a feeling: dark, deep, and old
no dog barks
within this moment.
no car honks, no plane drones;
there is no dull roar of industry
faint in the ear.
she shifts her weight and the moment breaks
like the snap of a branch.
I blink and as she watches
change direction and
move on.
—
Patrick Dixon is a retired educator and commercial fisherman living in Olympia, Washington. His work is published in Cirque Literary Journal, Panoplyzine, Raven Chronicles, National Fisherman magazine, The Smithsonian and the anthologies FISH 2015, WA129 (2017), and I Sing the Salmon Home (2022) among others. He was also included in the Washington State Book Award anthology, Take a Stand: Art Against Hate (2020). Dixon is on the Board of Directors of the Olympia Poetry Network. He is a past poetry editor of National Fisherman magazine’s quarterly, North Pacific Focus (2010-2019). He received an Artist Trust Grant for Artists to edit Anchored in Deep Water: The FisherPoets Anthology (2014). His poetry chapbook Arc of Visibility won the 2015 Alabama State Poetry Morris Memorial Award. In June of 2023, he won the Cirque Poetry of Place competition. His memoir, Waiting to Deliver, about his 20 years fishing for salmon on Cook Inlet, Alaska, was published in 2022.
