Comradarie

Fishin’ in the Gulf Stream
By GC 

The gas gauge reads below the half way mark
maybe enough fuel left to get back to home port;
the storm’s howling winds and the currents and
the battering wave action dictate fuel consumption
and headway made toward safety or lost toward death at sea

Our boat’s deep vee slices through turmoiled sea,
we hang on as its bow rises, climbs the back of huge rollers
and then it dips as the boat slides from this giant wave's apex
and crashes to its trough only to climb again on the next wave 
and the next, and the next and the next, and the never ending next

An ice packed blue marlin shrouded in a plastic sheet
lies dead on the deck, its huge inert eye stares and admonishes
our searching for adventure and foolishly challenging nature’s Gods.
Eerily, it is as if the murdered sea creature could judge and render guilty 
we puny mortals who would take to the sea with temerity to challenge the fates 

But wait, in the distance a slice of blue shows against storm skies,
a break in the weather that has tossed our twenty foot center console
like a child’s toy boat or a rubber ducky whirling in the jets of a Jacuzzi.
The storm abates and giant waves begin to settle as wind’s current slackens
the prop digs as I throttle back to swing the boat west toward home and safety

At the dock we take the scale to weigh our trophy marlin,
it is a large one but not quite enough to challenge the local record.
Still we slap each others backs and raise our beers to toast our catch
to toast our skills with rod and reel, to toast undying friendship forged in peril,
swearing one to the other to go out again to the stream and catch the record fish