I visit you on this mild mid-winter day
to see if you've survived so far
Still semi-green even through frost
Bare, gray-barked limbs carry ornament bobbers
celebrating the fisherman's upcoming season
Lures, left from lazy casts last autumn, dangle
for children to earn with ragged sticks
The lake patiently waits
for the motorboats' hum.
No buzz of a pole sending out bait,
no laughter from the picnic-families that are warm indoors now.
No recognizable animal voices.
Too quiet, I worry
I throw a stone into the water...
loud plop, rings of life, ripple from the cold breeze
tells me you'll be waiting
3 comments:
It was one of the first days of philosophy class in college. That always smiling guy came up to me before class and said, "Hey, do you like to go fishing?" I had to reply, "I really don't know any girls from the Bronx who can fish." He said, "I can teach you how to bait a hook." I guess I must have looked squeamish because he went on to question the girl behind me. He definitely was using a kind of "fishing line" in that class :)
When my I met my husband, he wasn't a fisherman, he wasn't a golfer, he was a bowler. When we were engaged, he took me fishing and I caught my first fish right there with him. I'd never felt any kind of excitement when I had watched other family members fish in my past.
In my mind's eye, fishing was always someone sitting on their tuff for ours on end watching the ripples quietly with nothing whatsoever happening. That day was full of fish. It was crazy! At least one bite every half hour, if not every fifteen minutes. It was a newly stocked pond and we used live bate.
After we were newly wed, we went fishing again and failed to note the sign that said "no live bait" and that Christmas a ranger caught up with us and we were summoned to court and fined over $500 dollars for it! Those were some expensive fish! And they hadn't even tasted so good!
About a year in to our wedded relationship, my husband became a fisherman, a fly fisherman. He learned how to tie flies, and spent days out on the river. All the years we spent in that little rental home, he would spend lots of time fly fishing or tying or some other related task. Sometimes I accompanied him to the park and read, but most of the time I let him go alone.
Now that we've moved away, there aren't any good local fishing spots and he's been forced into a break. In a way, it is very sad. Yet, I am kind of enjoying my time with him now. For a while there I felt like a fisherman's widow.
I visit you on this mild mid-winter day
to see if you've survived so far
Still semi-green even through frost
Bare, gray-barked limbs carry ornament bobbers
celebrating the fisherman's upcoming season
Lures, left from lazy casts last autumn, dangle
for children to earn with ragged sticks
The lake patiently waits
for the motorboats' hum.
No buzz of a pole sending out bait,
no laughter from the picnic-families that are warm indoors now.
No recognizable animal voices.
Too quiet, I worry
I throw a stone into the water...
loud plop, rings of life, ripple from the cold breeze
tells me you'll be waiting.
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