Poetry Pause is the League of Canadian Poets’ daily poetry dispatch. Read “The Optometrist” by Chelsea Coupal.

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The Optometrist

By Chelsea Coupal

(for my mother)

She asks you to focus on the light

at her ear, small, bright star

dazzling in the dark of the room.

She flips through the lenses,

you lean close as you can,

focus until you see the creek

through the glass. Early spring,

winter’s frost-spit thawing.

Cattails: brown velvet tips

bend gently in the breeze. Wan April

light; weak, grey heat; two fish, one

in water, one on shore; one shining stone,

too far in to pick up. Carp are invasive

as old age. Pebbles under water

glisten like fish scales or fate. Do fish

create a wake – are they sucked into one?

Do they worship the current, swim against it,

or swallow it? Steady, glass eyes

and steady, stone bodies, and red blood

that rushes into the water, stains your hands

a shade of Saskatoon berry. Do they choose

which split in the creek? One or two? The pale

heat of the day dissipates. And the thin, white

clouds disintegrate. And the clear water flows

smooth-natural as a shadow over dark, silk

stones. And the red common carp heart

you hold pulses slow in your palm, size of

a child’s tongue, but stronger. Full of

fresh water, wet with blood. It throbs,

same pace as the optometrist: One.

Or two. And beyond the colourless grass

growing wild up the creek bank,

wide open: the sky.

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Copyright © Chelsea Coupal

Previously published in The Malahat Review.

Chelsea Coupal is the author of the poetry collection, Sedley (Coteau, 2018), and the chapbook, The Slow Reveal (Anstruther, 2022).

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