Fishing

Late July is out-to-drift season for me, the time when I loosen my will from its steady hand on the wheel. I can’t say I plan this letting go, or even like it, but eventually I drop my head back into the current and let it hold me.

Aside from the constant search for water, there is not much rhythm or form left to our days. Summer is, and always has been, the necessary unraveling that undoes all my doing.

I have been reading, but seldom write. That self, too, needs a chance to sleep and dream and be remade anew.

One friend calls this the summer of lost things. I keep thinking I’d like to write a poem with that title, but find myself thick in the heat and stickiness of it, unable, again, to find words.

Does the speechlessness wish to speak?, another friend asks when I complain that I do not know what to say, though perhaps I am just too afraid to say it. What does the speechlessness wish to say?

And so I cast a line into the still waters to see what message silence wishes to send up.

Perhaps it’s my bait, but I don’t seem to catch much. That’s okay. The view is nice from here.

Martin Shaw says, Look at the prayer rug of our own lives with our divorces and depressions and say, this is the mythic ground I stand upon. How on earth do I grow corn from it?

Here I am last week on the mythic ground of my 39th birthday. My line is cast. If I catch a fish, I’ll be sure to plant it in the corn for luck.