—in memory of Scott Harris
Six years have passed,
and I still look starboard for you,
you who would step
without warning from the wheel
in the no wake zone,
and I would slide over like your shadow
and steer the channel markers
and crab-trap buoys
while you took a piss off the side.
Then I’d hand her back to you,
this boat I’ve since named The Luby,
after your daughters, Lucy and Ruby.
I’d tie on topwater plugs
or hooks and popping corks,
test our leaders for frays
with my tongue and retie new ones,
check our drags,
drags set for paper-mouth specks
on some rods, for reds on others—
we, the only two in the world
we trusted with those tasks
for each other. I’d look for nervous water
and that shimmy like pitched coins
from finger mullet or menhaden
just below the surface,
and you would mosey the boat up
to just the right distance
and kick her out of gear,
just enough space for me to toss,
for the hand line to unloop to its full length,
cinching taut around my wrist,
for the cast net’s gaping mouth to fall
on the pod of baitfish.
You’d give me shit if I didn’t
fill the tank with one throw:
“lazy eight—I guess we’ll miss
the first-light bite” you’d say, when we both
knew that only old salts like us
who reckon this water like our children’s lies
could open a perfect eight-foot O
at low tide and miss the oyster bars cragging
the bottom with a speed retrieve—
your little jabs that made us
more kin than kin.
Then you’d throttle down and lift the bow
and jump up onto plane to the first
patchy bottom I would spot on the grass flats.
*
Safe light, the sky widening orange
at the horizon this early morning,
the Gulf ahead a sheet of glass,
and I am alone but still hear
that plural possessive
you always said when talking about her—
“let’s go get our boat
and sneak off to the coast.”
Now that you are gone,
I’ve missed first light again.
I will come in for lunch and take a nap
through the hottest part of the day.
I won’t catch my limit. I’ll wait until
the no-see-ums have gone to wherever
they haunt before I clean the fish. I’ll have
just enough to dredge and fry for dinner and three
or four crabs from the trap to boil for dessert.
Ours, yes, ours, my brother.
