“Fishing with My Father, and the Craft of Poetry”
Hours holding the poles over the water,
hours of catching nothing or not much,
and throwing back what we did catch.
What the hell was that about, anyway?
And yet today I have this patience
for things that drive some people crazy:
standing in line at the supermarket,
waiting for some fool blowhard to stop gabbing,
searching for a coat button in the snow.
The finely honed conviction that beneath
this nothing is a deeper, richer nothing.
Consecrating myself to the silence, and then
to what interrupts the silence.
by Ralph Culver, from A Passable Man (MadHat Press, 2021), first appeared in 10×3 plus.
buy link: https://madhat-press.com/products/a-passable-man-by-ralph-culver
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