Other Evidence, and: The Grocer’s Tackle Box

Other Evidence

Rain now, heavy, and in a few hoursan icy mix, then snow after sundown, heavy, with gusting winds.

The weather guys are rarely wrong.

No milk on the grocery shelves, no bread,no cornflakes. Certainly I’ll regret not splitting more firewood.

Atlanta at a standstill—big rigs abandonedon the interstate, cars spun out on the shoulders of the roads,

men and women trudging on foot in the snow.

For years nowI’ve feared the tall pine leaning toward the house,

the loosening soil, and the long crush through the roof.In the morning, sure, a kind of beauty—

the white blanket draping the yard,Jack chasing the apple core I throw into the woods—

but also those strange tracks skirtingthe windows

and fading again into the trees.

The Grocer’s Tackle Box

Not all dreams need to be realized.

—patti smith

My obsession with gearcomes from a grandpa who rarely caught a fish,

but kept in his tackle box one of every lurehe ever sold in his store.

I was especially drawn to the Pot-Bellied Bombers,deep runners meant for pike and walleye,

but also the Rainbow Rattle Bugs, the pink doll-flies trailingyellow boasloved by crappie and bass,

and the speckled plastic worms,rubber frogs and tadpoles, the fat Tangerine Hula Poppers.

He kept his tackle box behind his cash register, tuckedbehind boxes of bills and tax receipts.

As a boy I could walk by the Coke box and feel its draw.

Someday, he kept saying, he’d take me fishing,but never did. That was OK.

To prove the promise sometimes outweighs the fish,

he’d often let me open that box and thumbthe barbs on those lures.