Another poem I reworked, it fits with several other “dad poems” I wrote at Robin’s workshop. (Do you like the double entendre with the title?)

Life at Forty

Forty fishing rods lean

into four corners of the living room

fly rods, casting rods, spinning rods

each designed for specific

lakes, rivers, and fish.

Doesn’t everyone have forty fishing rods

in the corners where they live?

Rods waiting for action, the roll of the line,

longing for the lure of the perfect fly hatch,

rush of river, and the seasonal ritual of it all.

Each rod its own denomination with a story to tell –

a day of solitude seeking trout on the Embarrass River,

after dinner below Radtke’s Point to catch bluegills,

a cold November day fishing for muskies

as the boat rocks with cadence of the casts.

Forty fishing rods lean into four corners of the living room,

the biggest one still smells of steelhead,

large guides strung with heavy line,

its sturdy cork handle stained with the strain of sweat.

This collection affirms his dream –

forty rods owned by one man so at-one-with-it-all,

he said he had to stop reading Walden

or he never would have ventured back to civilization.

So at-one-with-himself that he owned forty fishing rods to

remember why he got up each day.