Sleetmagazine.com

Volume 14 • Number 2 • Fall-Winter 2022-2023

Kerry Hines

The Rise

1
The river flares
like a stadium at night,

keenly snapping

the start of the game.

2
Wind through the water,
water through the wind.

The fish are a single
personality – a flash here,

a splash there, but

a single purpose.

3
Dusk subdues the river.

The last of the light
oils its rough-sanded

surface. The fish rise
and subside

deft, slick.

Kerry Hines is a New Zealand poet, writer and researcher. Her work has appeared in a number of print and online journals, and her collection Young Country (poems with photographs by William Williams) was published by Auckland University Press in 2014. More at kerryhines.net.