Montauk Memories
By: Jacob Burack
The boat rocked,
Practicing the dance on the Atlantic.
Captain Art, weathered face,
A map of sea stories dug into each inch of line.
Montauk was in our wake,
The hum of summer existence fell away as we gained open water.
The thrill wasn't so much the catch,
Though the strike of a bass was a shock to the bone.
It was the silence,
The understanding nods,
Concerns consumed by the horizon.
Years melted away, but that morning became clear.
Salt flavor, the sun seared into my skin,
Art's laughter, a gull's scream over the waves.
Now Montauk's a postcard, a place imagined.
But the memory?
It's the steady pull of the line, back to that boy, that boat, that sea.