A clinker-built row boat afloat
Lough Doo in the morning light
summer zephyr, Irish hills,
Tom the ghillie smoking his 20th cigarette
as he rows us to where the trout
now swim, or so he says.
We cast lines, flies skipping,
lost in sunlight. “Too bright!”
Tom complains, lights another cigarette.
We wait. A quick snap,
a hand-sized trout is on my line.
Excited, I reel it in, hold it, then let it go.
Fifty years since I last fished
with my dad in a clinker row boat
in an estuary at Davistown!
He, like Tom, had his thermos flask, sugar bag
for bait, lines, knives, hooks and sinkers,
hours of waiting, teaching patience.
Fancy such old boats still about!
My dad is long gone, his sunburned hands
an image in memory’s bank
in mint condition, the smell of prawns
in mid-summer Australian holiday heat,
the gasp of bream flapping in the bottom of the boat.
I hold these clinker-built memories,
plank upon plank, sealed and waterproof,
and place them in my own small boat
as I row on my life’s lake,
journeying I hope with patience
whether or not I catch a trout.
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