The Second Bar

Thin light skips the waves

as he wades out to the second bar,

a guess to find the flounder or reds

as they run into the bay.  Dawn breaks

as a calm surf rolls and swells at intervals

against his stomach, the nascent

pulse of a soul in utero.

Time and flounder pass him by.

The sun climbs high, beats down, and he

reaches for an empty water bottle as it floats off.

A rope stringer leashes three trout to his belt, a swell

morning until the swell of waves laps water at his armpits

with him standing tip-toe on the second bar,

stranded in the ebb and flow of the bay.

And he swims for shore, one arm stroking

the surging sea, the other hand clinging to the reel

he bought for his birthday.  He swims, urging the trout

on the stringer to swim with him, not out to sea. He kicks

off his shoes and bobs toward shore, wondering when to ditch

the rod, the reel, the stringer of fish in his fight

to overcome the suck of the undertow.

Happy hour ends just as he bellies up

to the second bar of the night, orders a beer

and makes jokes about anesthesia while the singer

croons jazzy tunes of life and love, melancholia made

sweet and deep. He hums along as dissonance strikes chords

out of reach, churns under-currents from the deep

rift beneath the surface of numbness.

He gulps another longneck, gasps for air,

spills his story of an unknown son or daughter,

a mother’s breathless cries, fruitless labor, ruthless

waves breaking on shoals of grief, rolling on broken hopes.

Then last call, bright lights, empty stage, cold room.

Sorrow swallows him whole while he drowns

in a sea-sickness of memory and beer.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

First appeared in descant, Volume 48, 2009.