So here is the final forfeit for the book club game of pass-the-parcel! Whoever gets this, gets the big prize in the middle! I don’t know any poems by Ralph Burns, other than this one but it was one I used to teach my students and they always managed to create some wonderful ghostly stories using the images of the blue fog rolling across the lake.
Fishing in Winter A man staring at a small lake sees His father cast light line out over The willows. He's forgotten his Father has been dead for two years And the lake is where a blue fog Rolls, and the sky could be, if it Were black or blue or white, The backdrop of all attention. He wades out to join the father, Following where the good strikes Seem to lead. It's cold. The shape Breath takes on a cold day is like Anything else--a rise on a small lake, The Oklahoma hills, blue scrub-- A shape already inside a shape, Two songs, two breaths on the water.
Lois Elsden 