On Munsungun

My father in the aluminum stern, cursing

another fouled blood-knot: all the shits

and fucks as integral to the art of fishing

as the bait-fish, little silver smelts

I sewed like a manual transmission,

the same inbred order and precision

needling the leader through the ass,

out the mouth, through the jaw, out the nostril

and back down—suffering as my father suffered

the bastard no-see-ums and the guttering Johnson

the obligatory dud, orange egg-pearls

ballooning from its bust underside, hundreds of duds

like every shit-luck setback that drove us on,

fed by the huge image of everything

we'd never caught, moving in joint blindness

under Munsungun.

And whatever it was

it was the fight that delivered us—a tension

like a sequestered muscle, the line

spooling, unspooling, the holy-shit-

litany pulled from our awed mouths

contracting with distance until a whole

silence surfaced, the viscid, slapping body

absorbing and reflecting raw light

like the bit of cornea above a pupil.

And then his tremendous, decent hands

brandishing an oar-butt; the brilliant lace

of the gills, their crumpled hinge flaring

in bilge water; and the line, whipping

and shuttling, feeding invisibly back,

moving on on Munsungun, sons

survived by the same damn hunt they heired.