Gigging for Flounder When I Was Twelve

I'm posting this poem because I just realized that it wasn't here anymore. I posted it shortly after I wrote it, but I must have accidentally removed it back when I was having problems with the blog.

Although most of my poems now are centered around Meegan, I do write about other things on occasion. The occasion of this was my son's twelfth birthday. He's almost fifteen now, so I'm sure he's forgotten all about this.

Gigging for Flounder When I Was Twelve
- by Steven for Clayton


I went gigging on calm nights
off the beach in Mississippi
in late summer
when I was twelve
I had a lantern - the old Coleman type
that you can turn up ridiculously bright –
and a Styrofoam cooler tied to a little rope.
For my gig,
I had a stick
with two prongs on the end of it.

Sometimes I went alone,
But it’s best to have a buddy to pull you to shore
if something takes a little bite
or a sting-ray pops you
or the worst - the jellyfish.

I waded out barefoot.
Gig in one hand,
lantern and the rope towing the cooler in the other.
I shuffled along –
waist deep for a twelve year old.
I had to shuffle and not pick up my feet.
Because it’s hard to spot a sting-ray
and painful to step on one,
but if I pushed them up from below,
they just swam away.

I’d see the flounder –
sometimes just the eyes –
hiding
flat
on the sand.
I’d spear it with my gig,
wait until it settled down.
then pull it up and shake it into the cooler.

The best gigging was way out on the sand bars.
Most people wouldn’t go out there at night.
I’d stick the lantern,
and some matches,
into the cooler
and swim out to the sand bars.

I didn’t just gig flounder out there.
I conquered fear.
I marveled at the horribly beautiful
rainbow-colored malevolence
of a jellyfish floating by.
My skin became electric.
My eyes sharp as broken bottles.
My heart pumped hard enough to make the waves.

When I swam
away from the safety of the shallows to the sand bars,
a charge flowed through me
at the contrast
of the cool deep water around my legs
and the warm water at my neck.
Then, standing chest deep,
far from shore,
in the moonlight,
before the lantern was lit,
I could feel in my chest,
the pulse of the ocean in the waves.
I felt small and insignificant,
like driftwood.
I felt intangible,
like the billions of moonlight shimmers on the water.
I felt triumphant
and primitive
and humbled.

Then I'd light the lantern and start gigging.