Father's Day

Limits of Spectacle Lake

--in memory of my father

When the sun had slipped behind the hills

I said, let’s go back. Forget this business of lures and lines

and casting so far the eye could hardly follow the thread

out to snag a rainbow’s lip. Afraid we’d lose our way

and soon our boat would spin and sink.

There we’d sit eye to eye with a million trout.

When I was eight I caught my limit. But not before my father

turned the boat to shore and let out one last line

for luck. I held that rod for all the hope left

reeling in the wake. I pulled those fish

from tangled, churning light slipping underhand.

Six rainbow trout.

I don’t know who was more the spectacle that night --

the lake, me, or my father gently guiding the pole

between my unbelieving hands. Somehow he trusted

in the end of all filtering light. When he died

the next winter, I remembered six fish

laid out stiff on a plank of wood.

Eye to eye with the dead, in the wake

of the boat, I learned the limits,

the last ripple of life in a dying fish.

--T. Clear

(A poem from my youth: this dates back to 1980.)