photo: ralph murre
You Come From a Long
Line of Norwegian Fishermen
By Annie
Parcels
You are more
at ease on any boat
than in
anybody’s living room, including your own.
But especially
on your boat
where talk is
laminate sails and Harken tackle.
Easy
conversation.
No talk of how
fishing ended on the bay.
No talk of
mussels and lamprey
of limits too
low to make a living.
No talk of how
your dad died then
of drink and
sadness.
On your boat
it is easy conversation: courses and tactics.
Sometimes a
small hint of pride trickles into the quiet of your voice,
lights the
flecks of color in your eyes,
deepens the
creases of their corners
when you speak
of some specific Chicago-to-Mac
never naming
how you placed,
remembering
being enough.
Out of the
harbor you move with a swiftness that belies
your 6’4”
frame, confident in the weight of the 1 ton keel,
in the God of
sea and sky,
a God known by you in sinew and muscle,
in the wisdom
of thousands of miles of rising and falling.
Today you have
offered to teach me more
of knots,
wind, tackle and timing,
more technical
nuance.
I in my life
jacket, only remember the bowline,
need help with
the trim.
Complicated
stuff.
But not nearly
so complicated as when
your large
hands move
to frame my
face.
~ first
published in Verse Wisconsin
