Croaker Sack Communion

Through dirt roads and damp ditches
half-filled with scummy stagnant water
we drive and finally arrive: the fish
camp, a place my father's rented
for a week of angling for fish & memories.
He never spoke when we buzzed
lines out into green water
or raised an eyebrow at a bobbing plug
dancing like fist stirring the air.
Occasionally pulling a shell cracker
or striped bream from the line, we stored
them in a croaker sack, hung
from a cypress root down into living
water that kept the fish alive until
we split them open that night and threw
the entrails back into the river to mix
with worms and scales of the living.
Rather, he read scripture aloud at night,
when I lay awake, in a shroud of sweat-
soaked sheets that reeked like funeral
dressing. Then, he prayed aloud, his voice
deep like the earth that clung to my jeans
after a day wading through swamp water.
Lord Jesus, Most Gracious Heavenly Father,
Light of Light, Very God of Very God
his voice a cadence of naming, the calling
of spirit. And yet the cabin did not move
and nothing changed to an ethereal white.
No transcendence. No sudden lucidity.
Only lying awake, hearing my father's
voice plumb the silence, like a boy stabbing
a stick into deep mud, rooting crawfish.

*Jeff Newberry grew up on the Florida Panhandle. Currently, he is pursuing a doctoral degree in the creative writing program at the University of Georgia. His poems and essays have appeared in many journals, including storySouth, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Gulfstream Magazine, and The Eleventh Muse.