There was a day in mid-Spring, so lovely,
With everything now growing once again.
I told her, we must go fishing soon,
For the lilacs are blooming, and that means
The walleye are biting in the river and the lake.
She will wear a straw hat with a wide brim,
To protect her face and smells of sunscreen.
I will caution her to watch her hands
As she fingers the baits in the tackle box,
Jiggling green jitterbugs and fur-tailed spinners.
She doesn’t know a flatfish from a pencil plug,
A jig from a sinker, a leader from a spreader, or
A crappie from a rock bass, a pickerel from a perch
And strangely, I love her more for not knowing,
Than if she knew all these trivial details.
People who know everything are difficult
And would never waste sunny afternoons
Putting baits on lines and casting far out
And waiting patiently for that all important
Moment you cannot see or hear, but only feel.
Because she loves me, she will go fishing one day
At the mouth of the marina that opens to the lake,
When the sun is a silver shimmer on textured waters
And we will talk of common, ordinary, everyday things
As we wait for the telltale tug-tug of a fish biting our bait.
She fishes because she knows that love is a slippery thing,
A sturgeon in the seaweed, a pike swimming in the shadows.
She knows all the secrets from my past that lie loose
Among the clutter at the bottom of my tackle box,
And that there is poetry written on the bellies of bluegills.
