Persistence
Apr. 26th, 2026 08:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
michaelboyThis grainy photo represents one of the many times my mom and dad took us to Captina Creek.
Somewhere left among the slippery rocks of this creek are pieces that surely made me...even while sporting an early-style thong bathing suit. Dad would bring his minnow (”minnie”) net for us to catch minnows and he would fish for rock bass in his hip-waders while we played in the water. We took a few old car tire inner-tubes to float around in the water (in spite of their valve-stems repeatedly poking us in the back). We learned not to be afraid of crawdads and that they could swim much faster in reverse. We also learned that some of them were ’softshell’ while others were ’hardshell’.
I remember my mom swimming in her bra and panties. When a car would go by on the road, she’d dip down until they had passed. We laughed about it, as we thought it was an extremely racy thing for OUR mom to do. We had a large wool blanket on the rocky shore and there we had homemade snacks with something like Lemon-Blend to drink.
On the way home we would pass this tiny shack:
It was occupied by a man who would pleasantly wave as we passed. I often wondered how lonely and difficult of a life he might have had living there by himself.
Then we would drive through a turn in the road that dad always said went in complete circle (we half believed him). Sometimes we stopped and got real spring water from a pipe that was stuck in the wall of a roadcut.
At the time, I had no idea how the smell of that creek and the sound of its water might persist.
* * *
I have always in you
a better part of me
chosen by warmth,
raptured in summer:
Somewhere left among the slippery rocks of this creek are pieces that surely made me...even while sporting an early-style thong bathing suit. Dad would bring his minnow (”minnie”) net for us to catch minnows and he would fish for rock bass in his hip-waders while we played in the water. We took a few old car tire inner-tubes to float around in the water (in spite of their valve-stems repeatedly poking us in the back). We learned not to be afraid of crawdads and that they could swim much faster in reverse. We also learned that some of them were ’softshell’ while others were ’hardshell’.
I remember my mom swimming in her bra and panties. When a car would go by on the road, she’d dip down until they had passed. We laughed about it, as we thought it was an extremely racy thing for OUR mom to do. We had a large wool blanket on the rocky shore and there we had homemade snacks with something like Lemon-Blend to drink.
On the way home we would pass this tiny shack:
It was occupied by a man who would pleasantly wave as we passed. I often wondered how lonely and difficult of a life he might have had living there by himself.
Then we would drive through a turn in the road that dad always said went in complete circle (we half believed him). Sometimes we stopped and got real spring water from a pipe that was stuck in the wall of a roadcut.
At the time, I had no idea how the smell of that creek and the sound of its water might persist.
* * *
I have always in you
a better part of me
chosen by warmth,
raptured in summer:
