I am going fishing.
I want to watch the water
dimpling around my line,
clouds of gnats
hover in the light like quartz.
The falconry of silence.
How silence itself is a wing,
following the curve
of its feathers.
The sky comes up
from the bottom of the lake
like an immense whale.
Dad,
bait my hook.
But yes…
I can do it myself now.
You taught me.
Sit with me on the pier.
Cast your line into the murk.
I have grown up.
I don’t look beyond the place
where my heart places you.
Death is a private thing.
We are fishing.
Our eyes will close together
soon enough.
It is good
that a man remain a boy.
It is good
that fathers come back.
That the soul doesn’t keep time,
dispute,
what a fisherman knows.
Fishing you said
was for fathers and boys.
If you want to remember
how it is,
take a young boy fishing.