A Fisherman

A fisherman alone upon his boat, the lapping water ringing its aluminum hull, rhythmic & lulling. The water carries him. He is borne along, & around him all of the ministrations of the day proceed. The distant hills dull to shadow, the clouds filter past, the leaves shush in a shiver of autumnal breeze, & elsewhere all the living things circle & dizzy, seen or unseen. Night will fall, morning will break, gleams from shore will beg his attention, or swooping birds, or the murmur of machinations beyond his seeing. He will forget the water that carries him. & then, he will hear it, & will triangulate his position, & know his bearings based on the shape it makes in the earth, there & not really there, capable of being plumbed but lending its every mystery, yielding them to the eye. 


To grieve is, I think, to be carried along that way, forgetting what slow current issues you forth, promising in stuttering & slipping time deliverance on some unseen shore. You know when you stepped foot in the boat & you can recall acutely those first details in stunning clarity. You were awake for so long, your sadness sleeping in you or clamoring through you. Gradually, the lake rocked you into longer & longer bouts of rest, & as you traveled, your eyes started to consider what was external to your immediate & enduring relationship with the water below. You were permitted distraction. A storm broke, the waves roiled, white-capped & ink-black. Then sun, & calm, but still that profound depth resonant & churling beneath, galling simply because there, unexamined. Altogether different, though, from the depth seconds along, & hours further, & days & weeks. Never the same but always of the same substance. 


There will be a shore, & you may step from the boat, delivered, & like everything, your passage through will have changed you, will have defined precisely how you got there. 


The fisherman stands at the prow. Twenty-five scoters weave past in no hurry whatsoever. A lone cormorant is twinned by his reflection & appears scattered & searching before plunging down & holding his breath & waiting again for bright light of day. The boat fares forward over slow time, cleaving the water, leaving in its wake the reply rushing off to soften & slough on the shores-- I have been here. In the middle of this lake, passing through.


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