C.B. Crenshaw

Clapboard Creek

Let me tell you about the fish.

Once in the summer of 

my childhood splendor,

attracted to a Winn-Dixie shrimp,

a pufferfish attached herself

to a hook on a line 

and at the end of it 

I stood, ungrown in 

my Walmart sneakers. 

Thrilled by the ancient twitch 

I reeled, furiously, 

anxious to take communion with the mysterious Other at the end of the line. 

Sometimes, I had learned, 

The twitch might be a crab 

eating the shrimp,

so watching the fish emerge, 

pale white and green

from the brackish wash, 

was a sort of gift.

In wonder at nature's infinite,

I watched her inflatable sac 

fill with air as she reacted to my Otherness. 

Which is quite a thing, 

come to think of it.

Rather than wonder at the alchemy of 

air to fish flesh, 

the men looked upon my fish

with quiet disdain.

That’s a puffer,

said they, 

be careful with it. 

Someone said once I should not 

touch the puffer’s weapon, 

and knowing not what to do, 

I cut the line and let her drop

toward the salt-fresh wash,

where she fell, steadfast

into the rocks below.

Lodged firmly there by 

her fear and mine,

she would not give way.

Each moment above the water, 

I thought, was like a moment

for me beneath,

a moment closer to drowning.

So here I would be 

the death-angel for this beautiful Other

inflated in the rip-rap granite. 

I worked, therefore,

to ease the fish's burden,

fretting over the rocks with

fishing pole and sticks,

shoes but not hands,

But none of these would 

calm the ancient instinct.

Defeated, finally,

I abandoned the fish

and rode home moping and weeping.

Still, there was hope.

The coming of the tide might

deliver the helpless Other, 

or time passing, perhaps,

I thought that somehow

she might work herself free

as a fish might best do. 

Which is what we say to ease the pain 

of power misspent.

Beneath that balm,

I knew she would be 

drowned by the dry, 

and I was the cause.

Seeing my distress

The men there said, 

Dry your eye.

Some day, said they,

you will be 

the kind to place 

a fish in proportion.

So I have.

The fish is the star of this poem,

and the men do not

come off the heroes.

∘˚˳°∘˚˳°

Pop

The sun had only just begun 

               to color the westward tide

when Pop pulled the nylon rope and

                    half a score horses surged to life

               in the cool damp. He lowered the 

                              vibrating equine into the fish-smelling

wash and away they slapped wave upon

               ripple out to the channel 

                         there to meet the naiad of the marsh.