This steely morning a flattened rugosa sun

casts its cool melted petals away up river

in the path of working men. At the bow,

one faces his fishing day bathed in pinks

while the sternman, hands on the outboard, gazes

over mercury ripples. He sees only the earliest hour,

waking too warm, tangled in late-spring flannel,

nudging her to witness the glow on the horizon,

wanting to hear her words on the passing of winter.

Then the hurry. His boots behind the stove where

she’d set them to dry. Blackest coffee – the last

burning mouthful thick and sweet and he is out

into the foredawn, stars wheeling above.

Now she sits in his chair. With the ghost of a smile

she pushes her finger through the coffee and sugar

he stirred onto the table. She knows

how he always looks back in her direction.

Standing, she reaches for the dishcloth.

Down river he snugs his collar

against the wind. “Yup,” he thinks,

“Some days just aren’t that hard.”

Kathy Garcelon is “chief cook and bottle washer, spackler and painter” and cattle farmer at her home in East Machias.