Fishing

Here's day twenty-five's: submission for NaPoWriMo (a poem a day for the month of April in honor of National Poetry Month):

Fishing

These days I frequently cast my net

over my northern Indiana hometown,

fishing for childhood memories

that swam away, into the dark water

of hidden coves, deep eddies

far from the shadows that stalked

the water’s surface during my adolescence.

I was a fingerling when I left that pond

and spent too much of my time afterward

swimming upstream 

against currents that were more than willing

to throw me at the nearest rock in the river.

It wasn’t pretty.

I eventually reached salt water
on the deck of a boat bound

to catch fish, and had to take a hard look

at this swimmer in the mirror –

face the fears I would confront

about really being at sea.

Dozens of hands

tossed me tow lines when I lost power,
or helped me get started again;

a few even secured me to the dock

so I could float up and down

with the ebb and the flow,

and not drift away again;

where I finally feel safe enough

to take a small skiff onto the water

and toss a net in a secret cove,

hoping to snag one that’s

not too big.