Tickling eels in the creek
You laughed as I lifted up the dark, beautiful thing
You laughed as I lifted up the dark, beautiful thing and threw it on the bank. Bewitched as it danced, too slow to jump on it or hug it, it escaped through the tangle— that beautiful black eel in the night, alive under moon and stars. We settled back down, chins on the crumbling edge, arms in the water, hands in the mud, waiting for the moment, waiting a million years, in a child's mind. You sighed, “we’ll be here all night.” “be patient,” I said. The rabbits rustled, the fox listened, the stars shimmered, our faces—dark faerie reflections. Our father could be heard, coming down the hill, a ghost from Loch Neagh to call us in. But we were lost in the night, tickling eels in the creek, knowing nothing of what the old ones knew. “Call us in.”
My mother Peggy’s fight with cancer lasted for about eighteen months. During the later stages, when she had brain cancer, the treatment and the condition itself affected everything from her body to her thoughts about the here and now. Entropy and chaos was at the door of her whole being.
I remember that summer I tried to distract her from her battle and her worry about having such a big gathering for her ‘last’ birthday party the next month. She was often feeling pretty negative and down. If I got her talking she was still able to a lot of reminiscing though and I suggested we collate a cookbook of old family recipes.
Somehow we got talking about cooking eels. The conversation then lead to my asking ‘Well, how did you catch eels, when you were a kid?” She told me about how her and Jim used to go down to the (Williamson’s) creek in Clarendon at night and try to catch the eels by hand! I asked her to write a poem for me about the eels and the creek…this was her last poem. As you can see below, her once beautiful handwriting had changed. And she had trouble bringing her thoughts together. She did write the poem. Tickling eels in the creek is my version of it. Enjoy.
What a brilliant poem. Thanks