A fisher-boy's life - part three

A fisher-boy’s life (part three)
There is in Wales a place called Laugharne(say it like larn as in barn like the boathousefor there lived Dylan Thomas, once), whenceI was sent to holiday in forty fourwith my married cousin and my ‘uncle’).I helped fetch water from the village pumplater stood by the muddy shore, gazing over a vast estuary of river, mother seafirst knowing a small boy’s salt affinity,rushed ‘home’ to steal a fishing hook (one of uncle’s brightest sea-trout flies) and a ball of twine from down in the shedand with jam jar of garden worms ran back again to bait, stone-weight my line, throw to the brackish tide, far as I could:what would my writhing worm then bring?Waiting in slow rain with bated breath,alive, imagining, always imagining a fish, a catch, a game of life and death And so it was, first fishing time alone.I felt that twitch, a drag, a steady pull strong enough to move my weight, then line cutting drum-tight to and fro; butI was not going to let my captive go.
What kind of flatfish, this, my prize?mud-brown on top, (the side of its eyes),cream-dirty white below, fan tail flipping, edge fins waving, pale gills pulsating;beautiful, though, in a special kind of wayand still I feel its thrilling, slimy cold in my hands, this slippery muscled solid fish of toasty tea plate type and size and still I see its look of mild surpriseand still I smell that same sour fishy scentas, fast as I could run, back home I went.‘What’s that?’ my cousin Eileen said.‘It stinks the place. What kind of fish is that?'‘A flounder,’ uncle said, ‘Well done, my son’. ‘Close the door,’ she said, ‘It's for the cat. Whatever from you next, you are a one.’Thus my pride sinks flatter than that flat.
Bryan IslipPart three of  ‘A fisher-boy’s life’ : May 2014