110 Mile Creek--Saturday, January 26, 2008

It is mid-winter. Leaves paste splattered down at smooth cut rocks.
River ripples lap ashore, kissing a thin sheet of melting ice that pieces
together what moves and is fluid with the solid and always sure.
The green, wet cold shocks the bare, brazen hand that drops to touch.
Eight weeks tucked away from the barreling brutal winds is rough,
racking a heart and mind rarely turning warm and gentle.

The half-light in this little valley hangs from right to left in a gentle
pale blue, crisp in the intermittent wind, pleasant and silent like the rocks.
Just over the ridgeline, two hawks lift on breezes. They are the same color as rough
pines undefined in front of the dipping sun. Ice breaks into a few pieces
and floats on in the current. A wedge remains, hovering just a touch
over the wavelets. This time of year, there is much that is certain and sure.

There is the cold. There is sadness. There is the need to be sure
about socks and boots. There is the need for layers and a gentle
sip of hot coffee in the morning. The river will always roll. I touch
the live worm. He wriggles. I feel the barb and imagine it scraping the hidden rocks.
Threading him up the hook, I’m slow, knowing he can pull apart into pieces,
dropping dirt and muck. My small towel, hanging from my pocket, is rough,

spotted with dried paint, grease, varieties of blood, and a few clinging rough
scales. Eyeing the eddies and tiny rapids, I find a flat gray pool, a sure
home to a chilled, sleepy catfish, but this cold is for crappie. Pieces
of days and forgotten words tangle like a backlashed reel, less like the gentle
memories of heated docks and hot chocolate, or sitting on dry lake rocks
in July glimpsing the calm. In a quick flick downstream, a crane lunges up to touch

the cloudless sky, flapping with effort under the hawks, circling just a touch
above. They loom over the valley’s snow-speckled rise. The rough
pines stand dark against the diminishing white blots. There are fewer rocks
there than the sun-splashed scene behind me. The men who carved this hole made sure
to leave firm steps for those of us who shake in step, who need a gentle
ground of pity, a gentle ground from which to cast cares, to sort our pieces

of tackle into safe, little squares. The jagged pieces
of a snagging past are the sharpest to the touch.
The casting motion is to always be gentle,
smooth, never rough.
It should be led and finished with a sure
hand, a confident eye that sees with the solidness of rocks.

What rocks tumble swift and silent in the river are merely pieces
of an unsure self left to drift in a flowing water’s touch—
the young rough who learned a little river’s lesson to be more gentle.