He stands in the river, again trying
to cast just right, to lay the fly out

there, in the eddy. He’s been tying
flies for longer than his painful bouts

with arthritis, longer than his wife’s
desires to change him. Oh he has doubts

about love, about the river named life,
but here, where water ...

* poem, in its entirety, is available in the printed version of the current issue.


Bio:

Ken Victor is a long-time contributor to Queen’s Quarterly whose poem “On the Coldest Night in Quebec” (QQ 109/4) received a National Magazine Award. His collection of poetry We Were Like Everyone Else was published in 2019 by Cormorant Books.