Which is the price of gleaming. 
          -Mark Doty

When the water temperature dips below 48
degrees, stop feeding altogether; they will be
together, bodies forming a packed display
as if they know how to stack themselves. 

Clean the fall leaf litter before it decays.
Remove the life-blood pump, current
producer; it’s no longer needed. Oxygen
the last & final nutrient to get them through.

I am speaking about my father’s fish, though
I am feeling about my father, whether he will
make it through to see them waken in spring.
His fish are not exact expressions of the one soul,

father having selected them for their differences,
the ways each is singular. My dad was a dancer,
loved to shimmer himself in the glittery nights,
& an athlete, dancing on a court—even I

remember the sound of the swoosh as a ball
flashed through a hoop—the arc of arm
& hand in the air, feet inches off the ground
as he leapt. Now, he stares into the mirror-flash

of early winter sun, counting his fish, his hands
nestled one over the other in the basin of his lap.