|
He’s a big guy now, not the boy
who sat with me so many hours
in the sun-flooded rowboat thirty years ago
when, despite my ignorance,
I did my best to act like a fisherman
and show him how.
So much has fallen apart,
the tangled gear
rusted with neglect;
so much unsaid, fought over,
yet we can still do this together:
sit near in the way men do;
focus on tackle, bait, lures, lake, winds
and, of course, the elusive fish
we mean to tempt from their murky world.
I see his boyish joy again,
sense the depths that lurk beneath our boat.
Lucky, a northern pike strikes our lure.
We’ve never seen one before.
Jon brings him in and I hold him firmly
below the head and work the hook out
so we can throw him back.
He’s long, fierce looking and beautiful:
square jaw, small sharp teeth,
faint purple markings on his belly.
A visitor from the other world.
Will he heal as in the stories?
Or say, “Get serious.
I’m supposed to be eaten.”
The long line of days stretches across the water.
We flick the rod and the reel lets out the line:
almost invisible, knotted here and there,
settling quietly downward. Time’s
flickering cocoon.
|
