April 3rd: Fishing

Consider this, poets
of the world at large:
a man, seated, reclining
in a chair he has built with his own
tools, his own heart and soul
and the callused hands that are
byproduct of his weary vocation;
he stares through a plate-glass window,
out over the grass and the sand, to the lake
that spreads out over an entire world,
separate from this one of air,
like a thin film of glass, the deep
azure and emerald and bright cerulean
mingling into admixture,
stark orange skies stapled to the horizon
at a juncture of the background paper,
green from the woods; smoke rolls
across the beach, fogging
over the water, from a fire
to get rid of those wet pine boughs
because if they rot out that roof again
I just don’t know if we can ever repair it
to where it was before, yeah?
the sun is sitting low in a cloud,
dampened, subdued, and he
feels for Helios from his chair.
The rain is coming. We’d best
put on our parkas before the
fish start biting, because, you know,
they’re already wet, and they don’t mind
what you’re doing; they bite
when they’re good and ready, now.
Looking out over the stern, rain
dripping over the edge of my
beak-like hood, I can feel but not see
his lonely, aged eyes, boring sorrow
into my heart. The thunder starts its low rumble.
We reel in quickly, tossing one last
perch back into the water, he’s a lucky one
today, son. I say
Dad, something’s wrong.
Jeff yanks the cord and the two-stroke
bursts awake, rumbling with the thunder
and the reclining man’s rattling breath.
Grandma’s in the bathroom so she can’t hear
when he drifts off. We could hang on to him,
but instead we toss him back because
he’s the lucky one today.