The summer before cancer

skeletonised Jim

we went fishing on Anderson Lake.

Of course, as always, I harboured doubts,

not that the dark waters had fish,

but whether we had the right to remove them.

Of course, as always, on all accounts,

Jim held only confidence.

His lure was silver and resplendent,

armed to the teeth with three triple hooks.

Overkill.

To my eyes pictures of

Dresden, Baghdad, Nagasaki

trembled on the dusk-dusted surface.

Jim cast; I paddled

at once praying for him and for his prey:

 Grant that both escape sharp harm.

By the beaver lodge by the loudmouth highway

Jim hooked a pike, pint-sized,

yet strong enough to snap the line.

But not before I glimpsed its future torture:

the triple barbs were confused most cruelly

in its head.

Between eyes, amid gills,

everywhere was steel.

God, what pain.

What slow starvation.

I can’t say for certain 

(certainty is too slippery)

but it may well have been

Jim’s last hand at the reel.

Cancer ate him alive the next summer.

That means my memory ties together

with clear nylon thread

two swimming creatures to a single

fate.

Faith

was the bait

for both.

Both bit,

Both fought.

Both now laugh

redeemed

in each other’s arms.