fishing

Fishing on Poncho Creek

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I haven’t had a bite for maybe ten minutes now, and I am visited by an annoying grass-is-greener feeling as I gaze across the marsh at that house there on Robinson’s Creek. You can generally find some black drum under that dock behind the sailboat, and there is a steep drop-off in front of that boat where you might just luck upon a slot red.

The house looks minutes away from where I sit, but, in fact, I cannot set a direct course there because the marsh between us is too shallow, even for my pram’s light draft. I’d have to row back out to the Tolomato, then up north to Robinson’s mouth before heading back into that creek’s interior, and all this against an outgoing tide. It would take maybe forty-five minutes, believe it or not, and I’d drop anchor at the dock at about slack tide, at which point I might as well head back home across the river because the fishing would be over for the day. No, I’d best seek my peace and good fortune right here, right now.

Pre-Dawn Thoughts of My Father at the Saint Augustine Lighthouse

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Here, at the lighthouse pier, my rod rests on the railing and for a moment my line slices open the moving water below. It is early morning, not far past six, still too soon see the sun, but the dock to my north is now visible in the charcoal light, and the lighthouse now reveals its stripes.

In the summer of 1962, my father imagined aloud this life I now live, next to this very lighthouse and not far from our ‘57 Chevy with New York plates, though too far from ever reaching his own retirement.

I often say these days that I am living my father’s dream, though right at this moment I cannot help but wonder whether I am dreaming of my father, or for him, or (could it be?) my father is dreaming of me.