Tying the Snow Fly by Pos L. Moua

I am     not a
fly
master

    but I have tied      some
& I presume each
intricate weave

         of thread requires more than
melancholic devotion

& long hours of
sifting through fine, exotic feathers
 for it to set well
above the barb or shank

     & one must learn to see
 the Wild loneliness

the way the water glides smoothly through
every beat of its tail

    & entice it        not to satiate
 its hunger
or desire

              but more so to set
one’s tender wrap
of memory & love
  at the end of the line.

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Pos Moua lives in Merced, California, with his wife and five children.  He has been an educator for over 20 years, and he is a member of Hmong American Writers’ Circle (HAWC). His first chapbook, Where The Torches are Burning (Swan Scythe Press, 2001) gives “an account of love and family and identity in the poet’s new land.”   His poems have appeared in the anthologies Tilting the Continent: Southeast Asian American Writing (New Rivers Press, 2000) and How Do I Begin?: A Hmong American Literary Anthology (Heyday Books, 2011). His latest collection of poems, Karst Mountains Will Bloom (Blue Oak Press, 2019) is praised as “a landmark achievement: ascendant, transcendent, visionary.”

Photo by C Wood on Foter.com / CC BY-NC-ND