Bologna and cheese
is all we took with us from the rocked shore
of the Allegheny. Water toed, it was a good day
at the rigs. Everything was biting
not big enough to cook
anything more than phone memory photographs.
We watched the sun fall into the basket of downtown
and bell tipped rods turn into glow sticks
bending on snags in the current
and boys cursing, sunglasses on backward,
because their thirty dollar lure
was driftwood hooked
same as a nightcrawler.
All of us hoping still
it would be the big one.
"Summer's early yet" laughing our way back to the fire.
Eighty pound test line
sinks on its own. No lead necessary.
Somewhere inside her
near the dam
a monster kicks and bucks the timescale.
The clean dish of still water
folds into itself paper chewed
by a mouth eras wide. Surface buckles and
sinks, the dinosaur in the room
snatching every breath away
one tail fin kick at a time
the waves big enough to crawl
all the way to shore
snatching our careless pack of Marlboros
from the cinder block I left it on,
the tacklebox nearly gone with it.
"Jesus," pants soaked to the knees,
tackle in hand, you're toothy shouting back to me,
"did you see that?"
The river top
still looks like hand gun knurling
not knowing if she's coming or going
in that monster's wake and I remember
your phone call
not two days ago
about taking yourself
away from everything
in ways
you don't.
Your hands on mine
teaching me how to put a bobber on right,
"loop it under and then over
so the red is down and the white is up.
They can see the white better." I've always been
a hands on learner, dad. The joke fell flat and we
watched the paper cranes unfold
in the waning light, rock skipping.
You said you lived in Shaler,
our feet where they want to be.
You and die. If you say it real fast.
The stars are barnacles
on the belly of the dinosaur
wheeling time like it's pocket change
while our shoes dry out
on the jersey wall
with nothing to go and nowhere to do,
the heels of our bare feet knocking
against the rough rusted tips of
steel bridge rivets
over spring wash mud river water, you asked me,
looking up to that sky,
"how good would it feel
to be whalers
in that sea,"
cigarette butt turning through the air
until it touched down below.
