Unhooked
the day I caught my first yellow perch
off the top of the covered boat dock at Lake Hiwassee
the long of my father's sun-browned arm
reached down to show me how to unhook it from the line
how to slide my hand alongside the scales nose to tail
the sharp top fins a silver flash that could cut my flesh
he showed me how to slide the fish's mouth around the hook
instead of pulling it straight out and tearing its lip
and when he let go of the fish to let me try, it flip-flopped
the oil-slick smack-smack of it loud on the dock roof
and when the fish jumped so did I, the gangly arc
of my seven-year-old body swimfalling through air
one story down into the water somehow landing
safe in the soft red silt of lake bottom squarely between
two giant boulders and popping up again open-mouthed
treading wide-eyed until Jerry pulled me out
of the stirred sienna cloud of Oklahoma lake water
and carried me to shore and I wrapped myself
arms and legs tight around my godfather David and clung
shivering and shaking against his fully-clothed body
and wouldn't let go until my father made it back from the dock
and unhooked me
off the top of the covered boat dock at Lake Hiwassee
the long of my father's sun-browned arm
reached down to show me how to unhook it from the line
how to slide my hand alongside the scales nose to tail
the sharp top fins a silver flash that could cut my flesh
he showed me how to slide the fish's mouth around the hook
instead of pulling it straight out and tearing its lip
and when he let go of the fish to let me try, it flip-flopped
the oil-slick smack-smack of it loud on the dock roof
and when the fish jumped so did I, the gangly arc
of my seven-year-old body swimfalling through air
one story down into the water somehow landing
safe in the soft red silt of lake bottom squarely between
two giant boulders and popping up again open-mouthed
treading wide-eyed until Jerry pulled me out
of the stirred sienna cloud of Oklahoma lake water
and carried me to shore and I wrapped myself
arms and legs tight around my godfather David and clung
shivering and shaking against his fully-clothed body
and wouldn't let go until my father made it back from the dock
and unhooked me
Sandra Crouch is a poet, artist, and letterpress printer living in Los Angeles, California. She's studied poetry on two coasts and two continents—most recently with Hollowdeck Press. Crouch's poems appear or are forthcoming in Rogue Agent, Rust+Moth, SWWIM, The Ekphrastic Review, Unlost, and VIBE:Transfigurations. Twitter: @iamsandracrouch.
Art: The Quail, the Rooster, and the Fish Ponder Tomatoes, oil on canvas, Rebecca Pyle