{"id":1545,"date":"2013-03-31T20:46:14","date_gmt":"2013-04-01T04:46:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kathleenflenniken.com\/blog\/?p=1545"},"modified":"2013-03-31T20:46:36","modified_gmt":"2013-04-01T04:46:36","slug":"patrick-dixon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/kathleenflenniken.com\/blog\/?p=1545","title":{"rendered":"Patrick Dixon"},"content":{"rendered":"

Boat Puller
\n…..<\/span>for Jim<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/em>
\nWe were alone on the boat –
\na green deckhand and a middle-aged Norwegian
\nriding emerald rollers sprinkled with drops of gold
\nin the late afternoon sun.
\nAnd though you were teaching me
\nhow to get a salmon out of the bag
\nwithout popping the mesh,
\n…..<\/span>I was somewhere else:<\/p>\n

…..<\/span>off the stern I saw myself
\nneck deep in Indiana, floundering in all those years
\nof not knowing who I was. or how to escape
\nwho I had become; drowning in aching nights
\nspent hoping for the moment I might know
\na way to set my feet upon a path of my own.<\/p>\n

While I was picking fish with you,
\nstunned at the sight of the sea so near
\nand the mountains filling the western sky,
\nI thought of dry midwestern cornfields,
\nand of lost, empty days filled with a wish to leave
\n…..<\/span>but nowhere to go.<\/p>\n

You bent over a red to show me how to use a fish pick,
\nnever realizing what was happening to me,
\nhow you were stripping away the web of my past life,
\npulling me through to solid ground.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

“Boat Puller” originally appeared in Oberon Poetry Magazine.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

A retired educator, Patrick Dixon<\/a> moved to Alaska in 1975 where he
\ntaught for 23 years. He commercial fished for salmon on Cook Inlet
\nfrom 1977-1997. His writings and photography<\/a> have been published by
\nThe Smithsonian, Oregon Coast, Cirque Literary Journal, The Oberon<\/em>
\nPoetry Magazine, The Waterman\u2019s Gazette, The Alaska Fisherman\u2019s<\/em>
\nJournal <\/em>and Pacific Fishing Magazine,<\/em> among others. Now living in
\nOlympia, Washington, he reads his work and shows his photographs
\nthroughout the Pacific Northwest.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Boat Puller …..for Jim We were alone on the boat – a green deckhand and a middle-aged Norwegian riding emerald rollers sprinkled with drops of gold in the late afternoon sun. And though you were teaching me how to get … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[22,153,8,1,446],"tags":[500,499],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/kathleenflenniken.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1545"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/kathleenflenniken.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/kathleenflenniken.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kathleenflenniken.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kathleenflenniken.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1545"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/kathleenflenniken.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1545\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1547,"href":"http:\/\/kathleenflenniken.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1545\/revisions\/1547"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/kathleenflenniken.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kathleenflenniken.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kathleenflenniken.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}