Tuesday, October 18, 2016

"Joe's Bench"

A plaque memorializing the legacy of a fallen-fisher was dedicated onto a riverside bench in Sea Bright waiting for the interest of all and any.  However firm at rest, its concrete frame and cemented foundation didn't stand a chance at surviving through the raging and ruinous night that was October 29, 2012. 

I never met Joe.  I'd like to imagine he was a fine, elderly man who awarded those he met with a warm and anesthetic sense of kindness, impressed time with nostalgic, neighborly manners, perfect strangers a welcoming smile, and as a angling companion, one who interrupted silence on the water with his many tales of bygone fish stories.  Eras of time I can only envision in colors sepia or black & white.  Lazy days of his youth that swept by like the tide rolling before his feet, off to the depths of elsewhere, but always seen to return with the memorable clarity of hope in existence.  The water he knew, as another returning flood of churning prosperity.  His presence before it, as the life-giving indulgence to intercept, wrangle, and reel-in another tail.  And with that, another tale, from Joe. 

May we all, one day, be judged as big enough to keep.







  

No comments:

Post a Comment