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The Fish House

9/27/2019

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Picture
Picture
                                      The Fish House 


No sign out front
 
Where my Dad and I stopped and
 
Gazed in wonder during the day.
 
We came after the pre-dawn chaos of men and boats
 
Chugging into the darkness,
 
Of a shallow great lake with more frightening,
 
Fast-forming storms than any of the other great lakes.
 
The men drove their boats in that lake,
 
Fears well hidden
 
We stood silently, as did the Fish House
 
Remembering the men and boats
 
Already on the waters beyond our sight.
 
The village knew the grey peeling squat building
 
Flirtatious Hollyhocks beneath small muddy windows
 
That was the Fish House
 
And its swaying dock on the river.
 
Hand hewn timbers
 
Generations old built to last
 
For their children’s children.
 
All that the fathers created with care for their cherished children
mattered.
 
Long before dawn
 
In night’s darkness
 
Low humming, sputtering diesels
 
Departed the Fish House
 
Into the darkness of the River,
 
Entering the lake beyond the lighthouse
 
Scattering apart to “their” place on the lake,
 
As their fathers’ fathers had agreed.
 
Unrolling their long nets with respectful love
 
Nets repaired by their fathers’ fathers,
 
Each knot,
 
a signature
 
and stories of joy and loss
 
And loss.
 
The schools of fish in those years, so abundant,
 
Hard to imagine.
 
The men of old could haul in their nets
 
Quickly filled with fish.
 
When the village was closing, going home,
 
The boats were returning
 
Smoking diesels rolled a deep wake
 
To the Fish House.
 
Now everything changed.
 
No longer a quiet place of head nods
 
Hand gestured directives
 
For departing into the dark waters.
 
On their return
 
Deep in the water from the weight of the fish
 
Chaos reigned in the Fish House
 
as tasks were barked and hollered
 
Wise-cracks and guffaws
 
Pelting laughter and raucous back slaps
 
As if a dam of pent up testosterone
 
Had broken free. Hearts were full.
 
This too was the Fish House.
 
Beautiful pike, pickerel, perch,
 
white fish and walleye,
 
scooped up and tossed by the shovel load
 
into crates,
 
others threw loads of ice
 
as the fish wiggled and flopped.
 
My Dad and I loved to enter the Fish House at dusk,
 
A place of well-ordered chaos and joy
 
Generations old
 
From the father’s fathers.
 
When the village dentist arrived
 
With his beaming son,
 
One booming voice
 
Called out
 
“Hey Doc, got a beaut set aside for just you, Doc.”
 
My Dad would set aside his life, day or night,
 
When the phone rang from a fisherman or dock
 
Worker to pull a tooth.
 
To the question, “How much Doc?” He shy smiled
 
And opened the door, meaning, “I glad you called
 
And I could help you.”
 
That same Fish House
 
Now locked up for years
 
Remains,
 
a witness
 
to generations of men in ordered chaos and joy and loss contented
hearts.
 
Flying ice and the beauty of fish now live in our hearts.

​

copyright 2019 John Holliger

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