Beyond the cornfield,
up from the old dirt road,
the tree perch in the field,
deer in those trees for miles,
I played in the sand of the lot
by the road leading up through
the pasture. I spent days
skipping down the steep steps
to the river, out to the dock,
to greet my grandfather,
gutting a fish.
He used a pair of rusty handled pliers
to peel off its inky skin, sipping a beer from a
key stroke hole in the can.
He saw a light in me for the black water
and the bull frogs croaking at night,
and because I had just turned eight,
he let me ride into town
for the July dance.
Riding back, the air sucked in from
the windows down of my cousin’s truck,
speeding back on the highway,
shifting the gears for my cousin’s
girlfriend driving us, my cousin in the
passenger seat, my brother
between him and my own body
circling, I could see the peanut fields
for miles.
We were forbidden to walk
one hundred yards past the outhouse
because of the bed of water moccasins
in the creek living below the one-laned bridge,
the bee hive in a tree on the edge of the clearing,
the copperhead we had seen earlier on a log,
and the rattlesnake dead
in the back of my grandfather’s
motorboat, floating belly up,
next to the one he had killed
the week before.
From all the way out there
on the water, you could smell
yesterday’s catch cooking,
the tails dipped in batter,
fried in butter. You could
hear the tails crackling,
my grandfather laughing.
We hurried back fast through the
patch of lily pads and cattail blossoms
which reminded me of an outcropping
I had seen once before of a patch of
cypress knees jutting out from the
water along the swamp road leading down
to North Carolina.
We continued along, some of the trees
still tied up, orange string on the low branches
my grandfather had set, bait for catfish.
I was half out of the boat before
the others tied to the dock. I was
already most of the way up the stairs
when everyone else started up.
We all ran to the kitchen to wash our hands.
We found our seats at the table,
sat up tall in our chairs, as we were taught,
the blue and red checkered tablecloth
lining the grey wood planks.
The rule was we ate the fish’s tail last,
the last inch or two of it at least,
an old tradition we had kept from
the years before, attending to it,
believing in us, telling ourselves this,
this part of the river, this part of the fish
holding some knowledge.
A. Logan Hill is a poet, writer, artist, and educator currently based in Richmond, Virginia. He graduated with his MFA in Poetry from UMASS Amherst in 2017, his B.A. in English from James Madison University in 2012, and spent his formative years as a member of The American Boychoir where he graduated in 2004. When he isn’t teaching, he types poetry for people on demand using a 1953 Royal Quiet Deluxe typewriter.