Jeff Newberry

My Father, Fishing

Dawn knives through cypress & pine,
casts slatted shadows over Depot Creek.

He tightlines. 
                     I eye a cork.

He draws the line, sways it,
lets hook & worm fall back
in the dark water. My cork lies

& drifts, no twitch. 
                              We don’t talk. 

His grunt-glower silences me:

I’ll scare the fish. My voice might
Scatter channel cat or bream. 
But nothing pulls our lines. 

He lights another cigarette & I
picture the bit-shot lead, the thrice-tied

sickle-curve of a barbed hook, 
dead cricket plumbing the creek
bottom’s mud. 

                        Twelve years old,
I know my father only in shadows
before work—the sulfur stench
of a lit match. Cigarette fumes.
Ashes flecking the Formica kitchen table.

These quiet trips to the water’s edge.

He fishes in silence & I mimic

him in the morning light, my line
dropped into the darkness.

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