Autumn: the scent of birch wrests

through the thicket near Kelly’s Pond,

parried on the sharp bite of muggy brine

from the harbour that is nine miles away

and carries on endlessly ‘cross the barrens

where a father and his son walk hand-in-hand,

careful of their footing, treading over foxhole

and briar, ‘tween the twine of orange hawkweed

and the dainty violet lupines that shoot skyward

and braid ‘round the ankles of their green rubber boots.

In the distance: there is a beaten down clearing

near the bank where they sit, piecing together

the old man’s fishing rod and tying clinch knots

‘round and through the eyes of old brass hooks;

rough weary hands and a child’s teeny fingers

stringing together, bit-by-bit, a memory

that will be one of a lasting few.

And in the din of evening, the boy is happy

and smiling as he watches his father casts the line

twenty-five-feet out into the breadth of murky water;

the little red and white bobber smacks the surface,

birthing vast radial patterns that swallow whole

the low-hanging sky. They stay put, silent but content,

by-and-by, in the company of one another.

In three-months, my father will grow too ill

to fish anymore; and in six, I will inherit for myself

those same fishing poles and tackle and forever find that

I am caught on a beaten down bank near Kelly’s Pond.