Fishing Winter
Maybe in winter promises are
auraed with warnings: a promise
of snow, a promise of sun
but the temps well below zero.
The folks who take on such a,
well, I don’t know what to call it,
gift-giver, bluff-caller, that this
weather is, have been made
to earn these cautions.
Their eider
downs & various animals of wool.
Their fists in their mittens. Like this
sea in front of her
house, all steeped in vapor.
&
the boats, they all seem to be
cloaked in smoke, the ice is palling
the chain-made scallop drag.
In it all
a lost scallop shell, its meat
long hauled off by a gull or some other
wintering-over shore bird
that gropes & toes the rockweed &
tideline, this shell, nearly invisible, is
half now of itself.
Valveless. What was just
being said about promises? or are they
warnings? The boats
are going
out today. The
sternman breaks the ice
with his mallet. The
captain smokes
& blows his coffee cold.
Somewhere,
though not here, not yet, a sun.
The sun. What else can
burn enough
to burn off the sea’s smolder,
the slabs of frozen water falling
back with a splash?
And who hears it,
soft and swallowed, on the face of it,
invisible ocean still making the boat
rock and rub up its mooring like that
half-feral cat in the kitchen at her leg?
That merganser, maybe.
Lone and poking
below the water, drowning some
and rising some, in the sea that is
winter thick. Thick with smoke of risk.
With gamble. Come on! Set your stake! I
dare you to
come out.
I dare you.
