Fishing provides that connection

with the whole living world.

—Ted Hughes
                                   The buoys hang wet between small crosses

                        Of clotheslines in a stubborn lean;

                                                   The creak of wood on wood and bolts pitted with rust,

The nets slump in exhaustion

                        Like hammocks and drag their toes. 
                                   In bare light, I peer through bleary wooden panes

                        As Larry unloads his night’s toil;

                                                   Some pilchards, salmon, a few yellow-fin bream,

Boxed in by handfuls of ice,

                      Leeching swirls of blood and coagulant. 
                                   He’s tired; his arms licked with salt

                        And heavier from the spray,

                                                   His body incised by three hernias—last year’s Jewfish

That hooked him to a bed for weeks.

                        Now, the fish boxes are half full 
                                   And leave pockets of air between each stack

                        In the chest freezer. I visited that evening;

                                                   His arms in electric hum—bottlebrushes of fibreglass

Sanding an upturned hull.

                        He’d murmur old stories like photographs 
                                     Of my grandfather; beach fires, jacket potatoes,

                        Al’ foil wrapped fish and the town

                                                   Before the servo re-dressed as a bed and breakfast.

Tar had brought Sydney-siders

                        Down for summer and he’d ask how father 
                                     Took the loss—how lung cancer trawls the body.

                        I’d mumble a nod, fixed on the roll of hands

                                                   Over ribbed body, drawn to the fountain fall of fibres

And the closeness of the fibro hut.

                        The wind drew in the night 
                                     Like the turn of venetian dowel;

                        Old nets bundled in the outhouse,

                                                   The smell of morning—a memory soaked in the grass,

Two gulls skittered along a galvanised gutter

                        And I caught glints in the tidemarks of his eyes.