The Hook in the Heart

Easy it enters. Steady now, rocking from the dock to the ribby, chipped, unbailed bottom of the don’t forget the tacklebox, the Coppertone, the pipe tobacco. Two pairs of shoes full of feet: a steady canvas gummy-bottom pair, two twirling bump-toed Keds.

Bronze-red upturned outboard, sleek as a Zippo, as his Remington shaver, paddle dip paddle dip, tipping the propeller in. Gasoline rainbow spreading on the surface and the pull and the pull like a lawnmower cord and the mixmaster buzz and the gurglechurned duckweed, shoreline, treeline, timeline shrinking in the sightline.

Shadowbottom clouds, the tremendous clouds in the breezeblue sky and the snap of the sun on the wake on the waves we make as we fly through the watery way to a shadowy bay: “Looks promising today.”

Holler over the outboard motor, noisy as another set of siblings: persistent permanent, clamoring, yammery. Finally stops and the anchor drops.

Ploosh. Easy it enters. Lapping water. Softly tapping reeds. Tackle’s metal melody. Plunge in the bucket. Slithery wriggly minnows as lively as fingers.

“Hook him under the dorsal fin, so he can swim.”

The Keds curl. The pierce of the hook in the heart.

Clickety whizz of the casting reel, ploop of the bobber. Red and white and red and white reflected. Great wide glassy lake of nothing to be done.

•••

Circling. Settling silt. Haloes round our shadows on the water.

Skeetling. Skeetling. Redyellow flash. Blackwing.

Scratch of a match. Crackle of tobacco. Draw through the stem the flute blue sigh. Wind through pines. Dragonfly.

Easy it enters. Shadow twist light. Love twist loss. Twist.