Cutthroat

by David Martin

I never told him about those cutthroat
we caught in Montana. He’d fished
bluegill all his life but never used his fly rod,
like the shotgun hidden in the rafters.
I met this girl and we drove US 2
from the Straits to the Rockies
drinking six packs of Grain Belt
and stopping at taverns for steak sandwiches
and American fries. When we hit Glacier
we hiked up Two Medicine River and
lived there for three weeks. I cast his fly rod
over the deepest holes I could find. Those
cutthroat were waiting. I pulled them in
all sleek and floppy, all green-backed and smeared red,
their gills bled in my hand. We cooked them
in foil and butter and when we dug them out
of the coals we sucked the meat off their bones,
it was the taste of love. All night I lay
by the fire thinking about that river,
how I’d lost myself and become my father.
I stared at the glacial silt of stars
thinking of those cutthroat, slick
and wonderful. I relived each cast, each
hole, how hungry we’d been, how
we’d carried in only rice and butter and coffee
and all we needed was those fish
to survive. In the mornings it snowed
fat wet flakes. We brushed the snow off
each other’s hair and stirred up the day’s fire
from the coals and after boiled coffee
I brought back the limit again,
five lovely cutthroat, we buried them
in the heat and opened them steaming.
I tell you those cutthroat tasted like yams,
like beefsteak tomatoes smothered in sugar,
like acorn squash and maple syrup, or,
at the time, her lips, the snow, the stars,
the river silt, all things he must have known
and never let on.