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On Lake Shipp

uploaded: Wed, Mar 17, 2010 @ 6:09 AM

by	panu
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As a boy i spent summers at my grand-dad’s fish camp on the Chain of Lakes in rural central Florida. Every morning i’d load my boat with fishing gear, food, water, a spare gas tank & i’d fish all day, everyday, for largemouth bass, crappie, & bream. This is a remembrance of that happy time.

v. 1 lean & gray & stiff as pilings, the old men gathered at the bait shop counter, to drink black coffee & Ancient Age, and smoke, thick cuban cigars, above the belt-line, their badge of inclusion, skin brown as the cattails, graciously making time, for each to speak his fable, wild or mundane, real or embellished, important just the same.

v. 2 before sun-up the boy would walk barefoot over the moss-covered rocks, pull up the concrete-filled coffee can anchor, and push the jon boat from the dock, gliding soundlessly parallel
to the shore, brother to the circling hawk, the gator, & the mocassin snake, trembling in paradise, aware of the chances he takes.

outro. at the end of the day, under an orange & purple sky, the last known king of the world sits anchored soundlessly in a shadowed cove, silent & solitary as an old bald cypress tree, a golden pollen haze on the lily pads, as he listens, for the slap, of old tales on water.