String Theory

A Prose Poem by Gunilla Norris

Photo by davide ragusa

It is so bright today that the two fishermen—dark silhouettes— seem to be standing on water. Perhaps they are father and son. Perhaps friends or simply strangers meeting here by chance. Time grows large and still around them— all concentration is on the thin lines cast out into the deep. I have joined them.

Even from this distance I hear the whispered whirr of their casting. The lines vibrate like silver strings on an instrument. The light shifts. The water rises and falls. We are waiting on waiting. Hanging by a thread we don’t know if we are fishing or being fished. It is the tug that draws us, and the silence humming in the lines as it takes us out of ourselves.

Later a cloud forms, staggering up in size and gliding towards us. Its wide, blue shadow shows the solid grey of the granite the fisherman have been standing on all along. I see them open their red lunch pails. I unwrap my sandwich then, too. We eat, brought back into the day by bread and our hunger. Wh…