Heaven in St. Joe

Several summers running Vaughn and Burl
used to take Byrd on all-night fishing expeditions
in the old flatbed Ford. They would fish the banks
of the Grand River until sometime after midnight
then jump up on the back of the truck
and throw blankets over themselves and go to sleep.
And the river was alive. On the bank those nights,
bank lines set and a fire burning, their hands dirty
and stinking from rolling big putrid balls of catfish bait,
even as they washed their hands, leaning over the bank
and splashing in the river, arms bare and brown,
rinsing in the mud-brown water, sluicing the muck
away in the dark water moving through in the night
unseen beyond the jumping firelight, away from the low
trees around them, weeping willows making a drooping
canopy of yellow-green, rustling, rattling, dry.
And the sound of the spillway faraway, water flowing
dark in their minds, breaking smooth in their minds,
slipping down the long concrete chute, rapid white and
rushing down to the deep pool below where the moss
so green and cool grew slippery and so wet on the cement
works along the river, the slick warmth alive beneath
their feet as they stood, toes squirming, slowly sinking
in the green cushion, a bed of flesh in the darkness.
And at last, when the fishing was done, climbing aboard
the broad-beamed flatbed among the willows
and lying back with the old dusty, khaki-dyed
G.I. blankets drawn up to their armpits and
the star fields sown above them all across the night,
glimmering in one quivered glory that seemed
fueled from below by the city lights that lay
downriver, the lights hovering above
the line of trees across the river,
a distant heaven haunting the horizon,
the lights they knew to be St. Joe.

Originally published in the Limberlost Review, March 2024

Photo by Luke Stackpole on Unsplash

Landscape photography of aurora borealis during nighttime photo – Free Sky Image on Unsplash