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Posts Tagged ‘fishing’

With My Open Heart as Bait

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on January 23, 2026| 1 Comment »


 
 
What are you catching today?
I asked the man on the pier.
Nothin’, he said.
What do you wish you were catching?
I asked.
Anything, he said.
And could I be so brave?
Could I throw out my line
to the ocean of the world,
stand there at the edge,
patient and still,
and say to life, anything,
anything at all, whatever you give me,
I’ll reel it in. I’ll take it.

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Going Fishing with Dad Four Years After His Death

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on November 19, 2025| 5 Comments »


 
 
Dear Dad,
Yesterday I met a man who went fishing.
It was sleety, bracing, gray.
He went fishing anyway. Actually,
as you would say, he went “catching.”
Just one fish, he said, but I felt his gladness,
the modest kind that does not
depend on good weather, the gladness
we feel when we follow the pull
of what we love. Like how I find pleasure
in writing, even when the conditions
are heartache and loss. Even then,
there’s pleasure in standing in the river
of the moment, my whole body attuned,
waiting for the tug. It made me feel close to you dad,   
the way his face lit up, just as yours used to
when the talk turned to what was biting.
And now writing to you about my day,
it’s like I’ve cast a line to you. The rain
in here tastes like salt, but oh the gladness
when I feel it on your end, the tug.

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How He Loved to Fish

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on November 5, 2025| 4 Comments »


 
 
Dad could barely walk,
but put a rod in his hand
and pass him a bag full
of tackle and bait
and that man could traverse
over mountains or swamps
to get to the place
where the bite was on.
I remember him reeking
of fish, his thick hands
covered in slime,
his smile wide as a river
is long. He was chatty,
then, giggling each time
he’d feel the sharp tug
on the line, whistling out
a long ooooooh-eeee as he
reeled and pulled.
How he thrilled in every
part of the act—
the planning, the waiting,
the catching, the gutting, the eating.
Years later, I can almost
scent it here on my hand—
the pungent, sour smell
brings me back to when Dad
was most alive,
not those hours in the ER,
not those years in the chair
swaying back and forth
to dance with his pain, no,
a straight path to those days when
his eyes were bright with ecstasy
and the current of his joy so strong
it still carries me, even now.

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One Caught

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on July 5, 2024| 6 Comments »

love casts its net—
let’s swim for it
fast as we can

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Fishing with my Father on Lake Pewaukee

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on June 19, 2016| 6 Comments »

 

 

 

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.

 

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Most of the Time I Forget, But

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on November 15, 2014| 4 Comments »

and yet you will weep, and know why
—Gerard Manley Hopkins, “To a Young Child: Spring and Fall”

I don’t remember if the lake outside the window
was open or frozen, but I remember the way my mother
guided my bangs away from my eyes as she said,

“Your grandpa Chuck has died.” I had already learned,
perhaps even from him, to gut and skin bluegills and bass.
I’d strung worms like pink garland on empty hooks,

but I’d not yet considered the death of men.
I sensed something sharp rising in my throat then,
what?—something that scraped its length.

Water dammed at the bottoms of my eyes. “Mommy,” I said,
“I think I’m going to cry.” I remember being surprised.
“Oh my darling,” she said, “That’s right. That’s okay.”

I did not know then how many more tears would find me,
how familiar the tug at my throat would become. With each death
of a loved one, sometimes even with strangers, I feel it,

the barb of the hook as it sets, the sharp ache, the yank
as strong hands begin to reel in the invisible line
pulling me toward the horizon.

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