Fishing

Fishing

The river, released from winter ice-grip
flowed gray like the sky,
like the gray-weathered wood
of the dock where Dad and I stood,
poles limbered, line and lure
ready to be shot over the slate surface,
to fall like a depth-charge into a world below
our jurisdiction. And we both dreamed,
in the quiet ritual of thwack and whirr,
that a brash German Brown would flout
the fish lore and the dark warnings.
– Mark Rhoads