Monofilamania

It is so hard to let go of love, lovingly. It sharks, unpeels more gut more quickly than reel or reeler ever lost in all those years of lazy inches in and out: casting, winding in and playing out, hardly fishing, rarely catching anything from the deepness out of sight, hardly ever losing . . . anything. Blisters lust into the greedy thumb. Impatient, sore, the startled brake lets go. It dives full length into the never, finds the limit of its leash, pounds against its half-round prison, demands unknot at end of end of rope - Let go! Got you, shrieks the reel and reeler cranking in the give and take. The line is taut, the weight upon it heavy, throbbing, not docile, numb, and waiting . . . . . .waiting for adrenaline: explosion against the angry, smoldering thumb. Caught to catcher, fish to fisher: let me go! It tries too hard to turn to something else: away. Away and bottom still beyond the knot, the creature climbs toward the light, the something. Easy, free, her leap, an alchemy: silver unto gold. Sun shining. Sea smiling, crinkled all about. Sad, slow motion flight of glints and droplets, arcs, returns, displaces, splashes; gone, the yesses. Million mile amnesia. Buddha flashback: a flash of tooth, then placid lips close over any sign of youth . . . . . . as if the fish had never been. Gone? -the fisher wonders: gone? gone forever? Gone? The line is limp as if . . . for all the years of it, nothing at its other end. A flash of recognition: she leaps another time, not knowing if what held her holds. Silver fish scales golden ladder a sunbeam at a time, and all the rungs of memory - so slow, breaks air an instant. The line has held and as she leaps, it claims her, a thunder clap. Arrested in her flight, and broken, she drops deadweight into the bucket sea- fish to air to gold to water, too bad. Of the gold, an afterglow centered in the thumb. Did it happen? Was she really there? Was I? Air turns to air once more, the fisherman to memory, pig-a-back the job at hand, because- one slender monofilament insisting: no! Monofilamania, and memory, another plastic, refusing to let go. Another time: Kite, my pretty lovely, so flying and so softly spun, you seemed the air to me. So high and free, so very near the sun, my tears dissolve the earth’s connection. The line my hands are holding: to limit freedom at its height, impossible without restraint- the line between us, subtle and so gossamer. There, it glinted, there! So very real. Real . . . The hook is realer. Tangerine transfusion from the fastened lip, transfuse dilution bleeds unreckoned into the larger blue. The sea - as wide as weakness - sucks the strength without a hunger. Tired, the hooked, and tiring even more, the line grows stronger, shortening toward the bobber boat. I’ve got her, cries the fisherman, orgasmic, raping at dead weight, dragging mystery toward the kitchen -on his mind is steak. Slaughter, separate from supper, passion with a knife, the knife . . . . . . the knife is ready held tight between the skinless thumb, and vendetta fingers - five Sicilian brothers waiting for their sister to come home. The other hand around the rod is closing on the lover’s throat. The rod’s erect, the reel is angry. Come, my dear, come, come. She hears the music of the end, the bowstring whine of gut still lean and taut from her weight alone, hears the rhythm of the reel and tries to run once more -provoking lust to snatch still harder- but can’t . . . . . . is free at last of strength surrendered with the last of blood: quicksilver nearing zero- and two dollars worth of ice. Maiden fish, (a virgin: never dead before) betrayed and penetrated, (it’s time now to give in, enjoy) rests her weight upon the line, sinks upward, drowning, unrebelling toward the bottom of the boat. The whore! I see her in the water! She gave me quite a fight. The captain, ready with the gaff, the lover, in his rented swivel chair, seize her from the water. The maiden’s heartbeat is faint and futile as a final cry of rape. Her breath is fear, yet sounds like passion at the very end. Her swoon is now complete. Her swain is prickled with his heat. His blood pounds within his thumb. He gloats, is left alone with her. He ponders . . . . . . while he does, she pales and sheds her rainbow. Her eyes turn glassy from the air, and death. She’s turned to meat. He lusts at memory for a moment, then dries the little sweat and goes forward for a beer, and band aids. The captain’s seen it all before, surgically removes the hook and tidies up the gear. He and the mate carry her to the ice and lay her out within the cold. The mate disinfects the deck with sea water and a stiff brush. Returning with his second beer, a badge of gauze and Vaseline upon his thumb, the lover is confused. The deck, shipshape, so bare of scales and blood it all might not have happened. Then there would be hope. The mate calls him to the ice chest for the viewing, opens it . . I’ve lost her. There she is. The smell . . . it must wash off ! Time to go home. The sea is empty. It is over. Done. My thumb!