Richard Jordan: “Casting”
CASTING
I loved the arc, the droplet spray, the swish.
The orange floater cut through clouds then splashed
where the water held the trophy cats—
hornpout, bullhead. Prehistoric fish,
it seemed to teenage me. I’d load my hook
with aged chicken liver, skipping mass
on warm Sunday summer mornings, cast,
wait for the plunge and dream a little, look
around. It was a ritual passed on
by my dad. Sometimes I’d see a stray
canoe out past the island slip away,
leaving spreading ripples. Sometimes, son,
the shadows play their tricks. My dad had taught
a vanished floater might be a mirage,
and when squinting failed, you had to gauge
your line, the tension. If it wasn’t taut
then there was dreaming. Say, of the time it took
to teach the proper way to set a hook.
Say, of an old canoe that used to sit
on a shore but found some way to drift.
Richard Jordan is a mathematician and data scientist who also writes poetry. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Rattle (finalist in the 2022 Rattle Poetry Prize competition), New York Quarterly, Tar River Poetry, Third Wednesday Magazine, Atlanta Review, Redivider, upstreet, Verse Daily, and elsewhere.