And God said, Let there be firmament
in the midst of the waters, and let it
divide the waters from the waters.
—Genesis 1:6

Stop me from thinking of watered-down
syrup on stiff Eggos or banana sandwiches.
Stop me from thinking of the dishsoap

stretched even further or trout runs
where silence kept us and the motor
stirred the canal’s brack. I was raised

by a beautiful man who speaks
in Let there bes and rig talk. A man
whose first ingredient is silence,

who has been betrayed twice
by his own body, his blood
thinned and flushed, his chemistry

the same cocktailed medicine as his father’s.
Stop me from thinking of soured legacies—
give me the father who knows the waters

of speckled trout from the waters of gars,
who coaxes catfish with chartreuse spinnerbait
straight into a cast-iron coubillion.

I was raised by the man who sits
at the front of this fourteen-footer
while I man the back by the humming Yamaha.