"Kentucky River Longing"

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The biology professor found the fish,

its sharp teeth caught in the woven plastic of the net.

I took its slender body in my bare hands.

The sticky river water turned slime secreted

by the gar’s prehistoric organs coated my fingers,

pooled in the creases of my palms. Long after

I placed the fish back in the shallow water

above slick rocks, it stuck with me—the smell, the feel

of muscles under slime and speckled skin—bright in my mind

like the glare of the river on a day in August.

Brad and I are away on our summer travels, so we’ve dug into the Plein Air Poetry Archives! :) To see the post in its original form (with a few more photos and some meaningful conversations in the comments) click here.

I wrote this poem in grad school about a memory from an undergrad Aquatics and Wetland Biology Class, but I’ve been fascinated by gar since I was little. I liked watching them hover just beneath the surface of the Ohio River, and I studied their prehistoric appearance up close each time one got its teeth snagged by my dad’s fishing line.

The Kentucky River, with its winding Palisades and towering High Bridge, became one of my favorite places in college, when it was close enough to campus that we could bike to the overlook or head to the rope swing after dinner. Long before that, my great grandfather crossed the river on the train bridge as an engineer and brought my grandma and her siblings down to High Bridge Park overlooking its waters. On the other side of my family, my ancestors helped move logs down the river toward Frankfort, lashing huge trunks together and riding them as rafts around the sharp curves.

After our wedding two summers ago, Brad and I stayed on the Kentucky River for a few sunny days, swimming and fishing, writing and painting, while trains crossed high above us, their metallic groans and whistles filling the valley. It was so special spending time together in this place that means so much to me. He did a painting of the bridge and even caught a gar! :)

Brad’s painting of High Bridge sold in an exhibition at the Lexington Public Library, but we have a few Central Kentucky paintings still available on our shop.

• Our shop will stay open while we’re away, but all shipping will be postponed until mid-August.

• I’ll be sharing photos from our trip in our notes. We won’t post any trip paintings for sale until we get back, but if you see one that you’d like to claim, feel free to send us a DM. We will reserve it for you if possible!

• Postcard Mailing List registration remains open for paid subscribers. We’ll be sending July postcards out in August after we return.

• We’re continuing our goal of memorizing a poem every month this year! For July, we’ve chosen “Summer Song” by William Carlos Williams. We hope you’ll join us!

*This is our last summer archive post—we look forward to sharing new content with you in the coming weeks!