There is a deep calm
between the boat and pier.
The water moves like oily glass,
one of those Victorian vases
with milky flowers.
It is a weightless place full of heartbeats.
Time has the quality of jelly,
elastic,
suspended in its eternal mystery.
The day is a bubble ready to burst with light.
The algae on the pier is a dark green,
a shawl thrown on the planks
no higher than the swells,
and I feel the sticky fingers
of a dream,
denied its shelter of sleep.
I yawn and stretch my arms,
a sleepy man gone fishing at 6:00 a.m.,
when the fish bite,
when the bay is silver with fog,
and the smell of bait excites a rapture.
I feel the tension of the pole
as I cast a line,
and the water takes hold,
and I fish where time has cast me.
Wherever in my restless longings
I have gone,
in whatever joy or grief I find myself.
A breeze,
a voyage,
a calm granted when I go fishing,
and catch something bigger
than all the horizons in the world.