When I was a kid we used to go shrimping,
me and my dad and my old Uncle Phil.
We’d carry our gear down the silent dock,
cast off our lines and head out to the bay
with everything black but the light on the baitshack porch
on those still August mornings that came after nights
that never cooled and the sun came up hot and bright
over the island to the east and turned the dimpled water
wet melting red that made your eyes hurt and you knew
no breeze would come and you’d bake and burn all day
in the seminal tang of crab claws, fish scales,
dead baitfish and shrimp shells afloat
in the bilge or dried and stuck on the worn floorboards
where they’d crunch underfoot when the time came
to drop the net and guide it out over the stern
and free the knots and snags and hear the motor
work harder with the extra drag as the net went off.
Coffee from a thermos
and egg sandwiches
with the seaweed low-tide taste
from your hands as you watch
the sun clear the island
and the flat wide water ahead
waiting for you no longer red
and a heron walking
in the warm shallows
along the island beach
while your wake rolls away
in long glassy lines
in a vee like a flight
of geese become liquid.
The green and blue and smudged-white shoreline
a mile to the west and the bridge far behind to the north
waver in the hot new light that you’re sharing
with people in cars you can see but not hear.
The long dock off the point and the water tower
slowly go by as Uncle Phil at the wheel
steers an arrow-straight course to the south
while you lie flat with your chin on the deck
and you let the engine’s thrum and vibration
chatter your teeth as you sight through a chock
at the line of the water and sky at the place
where you’ll fall off the edge of the earth.
In Memoriam: Robert Jahn.