Boy Fishing

As if by magic, as if all the many kinds of fish in all the many rivers of the world were at his feet, the boy kept adding to a catch that was more varied than he'd ever seen. - bream like dark rainbows, whiskery catfish that croaked at him as if he might understand and relent, rock bass, largemouth bass, crappie, perch, and one unknown to him that had bulging eyes and a luminous body. This last one he respectfully threw back. He caught them till his stringer was so heavy he thought it might endanger his bicycling home on the rutted dirt road. And this all out of a small overgrown creek above which he sat on a ramshackle wooden bridge with the big toes of his bare feet dangling inches above the water while he watched the little red and white cork bob and dart under over and over and over, the action now and again punctuated by the thunderous passing of a train on the nearby tracks paralleling the creek.

Yes, there had been many magical experiences since, both in that other country and abroad, but in this moment, to be Canadian and in a rocker in a sunroom in a village by the sea, contemplating on a dock in the harbour the statue of a young boy fishing that had catapulted him back to that bridge and that enchanted creek, in this moment all that, and to suddenly be old, seemed the most magical experience of all..

He wasn’t sure if it agreed with him, all this magic. He really wasn’t sure of anything at all, not anymore. But it was good to be there in that rocker in that sunlit sunroom, letting memories arise and throwing them all back. All of them. Respectfully. And then having a warm sip of tea on a cold afternoon, with a forecast of snow in the night.

1 February 2026
Texas Jim
Prospect, Nova Scotia