Eldest Daughter: Poems

Bass Fishing with a Hulapopper

68 Bass Fishing with a Hulapopper| i | I rouse before dawn, to look for answers alone by the lake, but the pier holds a stick figure already—casting. In the near dark I know Sean by his hunched shoulders: me-against-world. It’s not a time for chat, but there are formalities: Doin’ any good? I ask. Naw, the obligatory answer. The little pond lies quiet around him, the warm water smoking mist witches. Only what is close to me is in focus, broken out in a fine jet-bead sweat. Blackberry blossoms spread plain-Jane faces for spring. Too early for fruit, bramble claws its way down the mud bank, promise of summer, of berry-wet mouths and hands stained magenta, pricked with stickers sure to fester. The waterbreath goes pastel as I walk toward Sean at the end of the pier. We suspend inside a freshwater pearl, inside soap bubble colors, lost to ups and downs, distance— an island in the Pacific. The water is shallow as the sky, and the careful skin to separate the two will stretch through only later, with the sun. Sean casts for bass, I fish for words. The same straight pine trees take off into the fog that yellows around us. Sean’s father left him the answer, brain-splattered across a lined legal pad: Now that I’ve got your attention— I’m dead. My answer is slower coming, 69 the paper I’ve brought with me still blank. What is a father who does not open to the future? A daughter who does not quicken her father? Father death, child failure. No words to live by. I grasp for my stock hope: Maybe the answer’s in nature. But I have more luck in Sean’s tackle box than in mayhaw crowns that black the lake shores.| ii | Only what’s close to me is in focus. The tackle box, lying between us, splays open in steppes, the valley of an old river. The topmost tray disgorges handfuls of artificial worms, squirmy frog-flesh latex, in day-glo colors. I lean closer, smell bug dope, WD-40. The second tray down offers satisfying constants in gear— spools of monofilament/12# test, red & white bobs, lead sinkers I once bit with new 8-year molars. Sean’s changing his lure. Handle propped between his feet, top guide eye bent toward his hands, the rod’s a live, nodding thing. Rising light gleams in the next lowest tray. In tidy square compartments, here the big lures phosphoresce, preen, freshwater plugs—the names— 70 their names are coming back to me, every one— moon-sheen pretty as eye shadow worn too young, tinsel flakes sunk in amber varnish, an inverse camouflage designed to attract attention. Reddened erotic curves imply widemouth bass, horny as the teenager at the bait shop. The mistwitches exit offstage into the willows, and the light rises another notch. I see the bottom, where a good child would never reach her hand. Bead eyes catch mine, the lean flanks of a crankbait gar, hung along its underbelly with triptych hooks enough to snag an entire shoal. Gaping back at me from the polished chrome lip of a deep-running lure: my own accusing eye.| iii | The eye widens, turns guilty, backs off. I look away, smooth out the page in my lap. Dry land is dividing from the waters. Our shimmery soap bubble dulls, thins, goes patchy to a tired surface tension. Soon it will blink and scatter.| iv | A whistle: Sean’s casting rod slices through air. Reel plays out a long buzz. One tick of silence, and ploop, the lure lands soft in the shallows. 71 Perfect cast. Sean lets it sit still two beats, then with a wrist motion flicks the rod tip backwards. Full seconds later, at the edge of the lake, the top-water lure jerks toward us, against the water’s surface: G# plink and a little glissando What is it? Where am I? Hulapopper! I didn’t know they still— past loss, past grief, past anger, the smoldering bunch in Sean’s shoulders— I knew that reminded me of something!— G# pitch true as the bone flute of a shaman and daughter and father are in someone else’s boat, we were always in someone else’s boat, drowsy from getting up so early. Dimensionless...