The days lasted for years back then.
Summer was a lifetime.
He took me out on the lake in our boat
and when we had reached the deeper waters
he’d cut the motor and we’d set the anchor.
The waves made blue conversation with the hull.
There were weeds, I am sure. There always were,
in green profusion floating along the surface.
We would have dug for earthworms that morning
beneath a weed pile in the shade
of the weeping willow.
Now he pulled them out of the can
and guided my hands to string their thick,
pink bodies along the hooks.
We cast and sat. Perhaps we talked.
The red and white bobbers translated
what might be happening below.
We pulled up bluegills, crappies, sunfish,
and perch and threw the larger ones into the bucket
of lake water we used to keep them alive until supper.
Then I caught a drum, and my father’s eyes
glittered like sun on the swells. He pulled
out his knife and carved into the fish
just above the gills.
From the flesh, from the blood, from the death
he withdrew two flat white stone-like things—
otoliths, he said. They were strangely polished,
smooth and shiny, like pearls, like ivory.
He dropped them into my hand. I received them
as treasure, pronouncing the strange word
over and over. Otoliths. Otoliths.
I did not yet know that beautiful things
don’t last.
I held them in my hand the whole ride home.
They are gone, decades ago. What remains
is what I choose to remember—
the scent of the lake rising up. The
slapping of the waves. The diamonds
in my father’s eyes when he realized
he could share with me a secret
about beauty and its hiding places.
Read Full Post »