The Fishing Rod in the Corner
Ugly Stik, seven foot, medium action.
The reel is a Shimano, beat to hell,
the drag knob frozen with salt and neglect,
the line so old it would never hold and well
past the point of catching anything–
but it stands in the corner by the door
like a walking stick, like a shepherd crook,
like something from a life that swore
by early mornings and the river bend
and the patience of a man who could sit
for hours in the cold without complaint,
who understood the worth of it–
the waiting, the stillness, the line
drawn tight between the living and the deep.
He taught me everything I know
about the water, about the keep
and the release, about the knot
that holds the hook, the one that slips–
the Palomar, the clinch, the loop–
and I have lost it from my fingertips,
the muscle memory of tying on
dissolving like the man dissolved,
slow and then all at once,
a problem the doctors never solved.
The fishing rod leans in the corner
and I have not touched it since.
Cannot grip it without gripping him–
the calloused hand, the squint against the glint
of sun on water, the way he cast
with a wrist that barely moved,
so smooth, so practiced, so precise–
everything I never proved
I could do on my own.
The rod just stands and waits.
The reel collects its dust.
And I collect the weight.
I took it out last week.
Carried it to the truck, drove south
to the river where we always went–
the spot below the bridge, the mouth
of the creek that feeds the channel cold.
I sat on the tailgate in the rain
and held the rod across my lap
and could not bring myself to cast the line again.
The cork grip smelled like his hand.
Or I imagined that it did.
Either way I sat there forty minutes
crying like a stupid kid
who lost his father at the river,
which is exactly what I am–
a grown man with a fishing rod
and a grief too large to understand.