Clade Song 15

Generations of Men

When my son was ten, we went
fishing in the Cape Cod canal
just the two of us, happy as we
dropped our lines, the wake
from boats smashed against
the rocks and we thought we had hooked
the bottom of the great passageway.

When we pulled and pulled
it began to give and onto the rocks
tumbled a muscular black fish
with shades of olive green,
a tautog with, thick rubbery lips,
powerful jaws looking prehistoric.

Forty years later my grandson took me
in his John boat in Mattapoisett under
a warm blue sky at the beginning of November.
He was an accomplished fisherman.
The water was as calm as a shaving
mirror. He lowered the crab bait, just
above the bottom rocks, waited until
the fish ate it and pulled it up to the boat.

This tautog was a dusky chocolate
dark with age. My grandson and I
threw it back and began again united
in our quest like men in three-piece suits,
like workers in soiled clothes who have fished
for centuries, a small part of this
fraternity of fishermen, founded by Saint Peter.

Steven Luria Ablon, poet and adult and child psychoanalyst, teaches child psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital and publishes widely in academic journals. He won the Academy of American Poets’ Prize 1961 and the National Library of Poetry, Editor’s Choice Award 1994. His poems have appeared in many anthologies and magazines. His collections of poetry are Tornado Weather, Mellen Poetry Press, Lewiston, New York, 1993; Flying Over Tasmania, The Fithian Press, Santa Barbara, California, 1997; Blue Damsels, Peter E Randall Publisher, Portsmouth, New Hampshire, 2005; Night Call, Plain View Press, Auston, Texas, 2011; and Dinner in the Garden, Columbia, South Carolina, 2018.