Bait Shop

The following poem was written by a Door County author and featured in the 2011 Wisconsin Poets’ Calendar.

Bait Shop

You know that smell
the minute you walk in
Know you’ve reached back & found it again
that old bait shop, milk & bread store
at the four corners by the lake.

Could be in Petoskey where Old Hem
hung out on his way to the Big Two Hearted
or the one in Baileys on the harbor
any hundred others near the U.P. or the Brule

And you’re 10 again, a can of worms in your fist
waiting for Dad to take you out in that old row boat
with the leaky bottom, water sloshing between the slats
tied to the dock & bobbing in the morning mist
up at Uncle Hank’s.

Walk through that old wooden screen door – BAM!
Bags of chips, iced cokes & souvenirs – jack knives,
birch bark canoes & sweetgrass baskets For Sale
next to postcards of black bear & trout, all
steeped in the scent of old wood, damp & musty
Closed-for-Winter air lingering in the summer’s musk

Walking back through that door
to summers past.