The Hole

He was looking at a hole and then he wasn’t, then he was, and all the ways in which we are confused by this are ways in which his mother loved his life and he did not.

The hole was in the step, the porch, behind it or in front: anywhere his foot would go if it would go somewhere, but at the moment it did not, either.

The hole was in the house and in the clustered asters at the drive. It was in the drive and of the drive and it of it. He could hear it start in him, a sound of something like a boat, displacing water. He heard the putter first and then the hole, not the other way around.

He thought the best that he could do was stand, and if there were a boat, and if a fish came by, then he would toss a line. He heard that you should toss a line into a hole. With something on it. If you did this, more than once, chances are that one time you would help a fish climb out. He felt himself for scales. He would not be climbing out today.

And so he stood awhile inside the porch, within his house, along a pebbled beach, beside a jetty, on a bank; and in a boat, one hand upon the motor, one attached to line.