God bless the undertow
and the cold slap
of waders on the Sound.
Above are the black echoed waves
of nervous fiber,
a Jesus bug tension
that fills and lifts the fly line.
And between current and surface
is just a heaven
that touches here and back there and back then.
Pray with false cast after false cast—
the line like a lifting shawl unfurls and licks the sky—
breach the caul of the water with a tongue,
a dialect, and call the god of it all
with mumbling and tasting.
Hook the sea
and set its course
to amniotic waters.
Daragh Hoey is an Irish emigrant who has lived on all three American coasts and earned his degrees in computer science and law from Dublin City University and the University of Houston, respectively. Now settled in Seattle with his wife, son, and cat, he is a new writer, learning, and happy for it.