Kid Fishing Versus The World

Kid fishing was the one thing
I had, back when I had
so little.

My awkwardness
with the girls I liked drove me
to the pond in the woods
to be alone. I’d stuff my pain
down in my rucksack with the pad
I was starting to carry everywhere
even then. I’d thread a worm onto
a snelled hook and cast out beyond
the drainpipe into the cove
and almost always bring up
a scrappy perch to be tossed back
like a bad pickup line, over and over,
all afternoon, every afternoon,
all summer long.  
I wasn’t happy
but I was less sad.

Adult fishing? Now
that’s different, softer,
less serious. I don’t go often
and when I do I mostly drink, 
cast a line now and then
for the sake of the art, never
catch a thing, and
write down stories about
what got away,
even though I’ve no idea 
of what lives here.

Still awkward?
Not so much. 
The most awkward
I feel when I fish these days 

is when
I dip into 
the so-cold-it’s-hot stream
to pull up beer and brandy
from where I stash it
in the deeper pool behind
Lion’s Head Rock, just out of
the main current, and I drop 
the bottles, sometimes
even breaking one — that’s

a bad day adult fishing,
which is still better
than a good day
doing almost anything else I can name

with the exception of kid fishing,
which I can never do again,
which (when I was a kid)
I never thought of as happy,
though it is all I can ever think of
when I’m asked for a happy memory.