Fishing On Myrtle Beach Pier

I remember the high arc of your line
casting into horse-maned waves,
strong hands as yet untroubled 
by trembling, easily reeling smaller fish
to throw back in, again and again, a circle
of give and take, and how after searching
salt-surf, the jolt of fierce life banging 
the rod down almost to breaking cut
a smile across your face: the frenzy
to impose death on the unwilling fish,
the satisfaction of almost losing shining
in your eyes like light reflects off scales;
and feeling the corner of my mouth
curving upwards, like a hook.

M. BENJAMIN THORNE

M. Benjamin Thorne is an Associate Professor of Modern European History at Wingate University. Possessed of a lifelong love of history and poetry, he is interested in exploring the synergy between the two. His poems appear or are forthcoming in Autumn Sky Poetry, Drunk Monkeys, Sky Island Journal, Cathexis Northwest, Rising Phoenix Review, and Ponder Review. He lives and sometimes sleeps in Charlotte, North Carolina.