FOR:My Father
JOHN FAST
The Empty Creel
Love Your son
The MOUNTAINMAN
Fog drifts lightly above the water in the chilly mid summer morning, the sun is still an hour from cresting the surrounding mountains. The boat drifts silently through this milky haze powered by the electric stealth motor. Fishing rods angle stiffly above boat gunnels held tightly in shivering hands in anticipation of the magical tug of a strike. The Silence is a golden thing, father and son contemplate this silence that bounds unity.
It was not so much different than forty years earlier except for the modern technologies and age of the fishermen. Even now as back than we did not speak, I'm sure there were things to say but we never learned how to say them. So it was as a nine year old I would wonder what he thought, while his muscular arms pulled on the oars of the clinker row boat making it glide effortlessly across the lake. Patiently He'd bait the hooks for his three sons as us boys would squirm, fidget and rock the boat side to side, he 'd take up the oars again after lines where safely in the water. When all three of us fished in the same spot and the lines came back in a tangled mess it was our Father who untied them knot by knot as we argued about whose fault it had been.
I was inattentive to my rod and line while thinking of the past, it was the tug on the rod plus the scream of my reel that brought me back to the present, jumping to my feet to fight this whopper I found a slack line and a chuckle. The grin on his face said it all, he had reached around behind me and pulled the line by hand. "Scare ya, did I ?" My father asked
"Funny!" I replied "Want a coffee while I got the thermos out?"
"Can't drink to much coffee since the operation, OK, but just one."
His heart operation was five years in the past still I did not realize it had changed his habits so much. I handed him the coffee cup "How are you?" I asked.
"Pretty good for an old man." was his answer. We drifted back into silence just as the sun came up over the mountains and the fog turned to a light drifting mist tinged in crimson magenta hues.
I always wonder if there are things he would like to say to his sons but is to polite to do so.
We had trolled almost to Indian rock with out so much as a nibble from the elusive trout. Splash! Splash! trout always smile as they flash brightly out of the water within inches of the boat. I was admiring the audacity of these fish when I heard the scream as fish line peeled off a reel. "I have one" my father chortled
"Should I get the net ?" I asked
"NA, I think I lost it, maybe it was just a hit and run" He looked dejected.
"Keep the tip up and keep reeling it's running in." I sternly told him the things he had told us so many times over the years. He looked tired maybe I should not push him to put up a fight he did not want anymore. He kept reeling and the rod tip dived as a lunker fish broke water 100 feet behind the boat. "I've got it, I've got it." he whispered more to himself than to me. I killed the electric motor and silence surround us again silence except for the reel spinning with gusto as my dad reeled with renewed vigor.
A poemFor my Dad by my Aunt
Dads pics an a poem
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