Fishing Trip

We loaded the motorcycles into my Dad's van
and headed to my sister's boyfriend's trailer
on the edge of the Hoosier National Forest.

His mother and step-father were poor as dirt,
building what they needed, drinking from a
spring, hunting for food in the deep woods.

It was almost an hour drive from our small town.
We rolled the bikes down out of the van on a two
by six and duct taped fishing poles to the bikes.

We rode on isolated roads past countless trees,
parked, and made our way through a quarter mile
of thicket to a crystal clear pond full of fish.

We could see the fish and the fish could see us,
the element of surprise and the bait trick lost,
resulting in no bites and so we moved on.

The second pond was bigger and murkier,
sitting on a farmer's land so that we had to hide our
bikes and sneak around the back of it on high alert.

I caught a large bass but my line got tangled.
My sister's BF had to help untangle it to get the
fish in, later taking credit for the catch with my pole.

On the way back we were flying down a country
road and a curve came up that was too much for
the speed I was traveling and I backed off the gas.

I was suspended in the space between road and fence,
coasting, because braking in gravel would have broke
traction and sent me into the fence line for sure.

I held my breath, terrified, riding the line between
life and death, or at the very least severe injury, in
the middle of nowhere, no help for miles and miles.

I slowed enough to eventually pull out of it, the seconds
seeming like several minutes, my sister's BF riding in front
of me oblivious to the averted disaster in his side mirror.

We rolled the motorcycles back up into the van and
headed back to my house with the big fish and a
realization that life can be short in a small town.


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Dedicated to Benjy, a bright-eyed and beautiful boy who died after being thrown from a motorcycle in the country when I was a teen.  I somehow avoided a similar fate.


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