When I was a boy
I used to sit at the end of the dock for hours
On end
Just watching sunfish
Circling in the water below
Occasionally dipping my toes or fingers
Just below the water’s surface film
Letting the fish nibble them
Attempting time after time to trick them
My sister and I
Made a great team
Catching them with plastic shovels and buckets as tools
Laughing and smiling and swimming
For hours on end
Concentrating only as children can
And then those days were gone
Just like that
Hours and hours full of buckets
And sand and and sunshine and sunfish
~ A Minnesota Childhood ~