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Mark Smith

Fishing the Falls

Early one morning my friend told me of his divorce. Mine I couldn't tell, so I listened to his voice echo among the foam. For I knew the nights of shattered glass, long silence, the times I left sharpened into shards. The days after when sometime I'd come here too, just let my line drag.

But with bait in sunny water we watched the calm, the confluence. Watched our elusive creel minnow safe and slow, then in ripple dart and flash. And that's when he turned toward me, his thirty-five year face blended with falling water. His voice evoking this riffled pulse, this delicate tangle of lines and remembrance.

drifting off to sleep
her hand's caressing settle
on my hip