TINKER MACK

By Alan Clark

My heart still breaks. One quick cast, flicker
of a silver lure, and it was all too fast
for even any stalking pleasure.
But the view was right: a brutal fog,
a barely tipping dock and deep, salt tide.
Off somewhere I heard a small child cry.

The barbed new target, fresh from cellophane,
hissed and with a plonk began to sink.
I’d snapped the bale and turned the spool but twice
when the slender rod began to quiver
(like my heart) and I knew I had one hooked.
His shoal came streaking with him, skarling black
around their pierced co-frere. But there’s little fight
in this—I plucked him up abruptly (too
beautiful to keep!) on my lightweight line.

Tiger-mottled green and dagger sleek,
his flank a molten plata, he seemed astonished
(I saw it in his onyx leer) to be suddenly
so gasping in such a choking air.
I held his trembling life in my left hand
and with the other eased the hook on out,
then knelt to place him gently back alive.

The fog was cold, the water, as I knew, was ice.

I cast again and didn't have to wait,
cut the three allotted to my taste quick
each time across the spine, to ease our pain,
then drove back home where an hour exactly later
sat with book and chilled down glass of wine
to a long anticipated, solitary feast
of tinker mackerel broiled up crisp with
pepper, oil, shake of salt, squeeze of lime.



 

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