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Thoughts
on Fishing
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Coarse wool socks and sandals
could not hide the swelling.
Clothes had by then lost their power
to cover it, though Laura
took extra care,
trimming your beard, I mean. Then later,
her hands on your shoulder when the shaking began.
Even seventh graders, those bloodhounds
clueless to everything else,
know which kids' mothers dressed them.
There is a merciless logic
to being dressed in sweatpants when you're dying.
You were trembling some in the face of it:
no surprise. Though surprises there were.
You stood, your back to us, staring at the ground
at the concrete's edge, breathing hard.
Then: "I'm so sick I can't spit anymore."
Then your mind, moving from present to past,
present no longer more lucid than memory.
One minute you remember everything,
the comet Hale-Bopp seeming to move
but, really, quite still above Mount Stuart,
the drive back from Chopaka, your grandpa the father,
even the word "salacious" --- only slightly slurred ---
as you remember the worst of my jokes.
But then you are off in a boat at Silver Lake
(where we never went),
talking as if we'd fished there dozens of times,
taking fish on emergers at dusk.
Go figure.
Though I was always the teacher,
and full of suggestions about which fly to use,
saying, "Presentation, presentation,"
about this I have much to learn.
Robert Doggett
13512 40th Ave. N.E.
Seattle, Washington 98125
rd@polarisasset.com
March 23, 2001
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