Moon Fishing
A few hours after sunset, on the day his wife left him, Meirion took his fishing tackle as usual, donned his boots and his oilskins, and trudged the well-worn path to the Swansea docks.
The moon was out, a giant silver coin reflected in the sky, and for a moment, Meirion listened to the lapping of the waters, the baying of the gulls, the cold drip of Wales marking every moment that Gwen retreated further and further away from him. He almost turned back, almost flung his rod and bucket into a ditch, but a moment later he was rowing.
He rowed out into the wide sea until his arms burned and his heart thumped like the frightened footfalls of a rabbit. And soon his boat struck the gunwale of another, bobbing silently on the blackcurrant waters that glistened like Gwen's end-of-her-tether eyes.
"Nice night for it," said his father, his own coarse hands holding tight his net, sunk deep into the sea's belly.
"Gwen's left me," Meirion said, readying his rod and tying a lure of moon-daisy to a hook. "Just like Mam did you. Should have seen it coming, I suppose."
"Never mind," his father said, before his lungs were wracked with a salty cough. "It was only a matter of time. They never understand, see. They might put up with you in the beginning, but they never really accept it." He shook his head, as if remembering the ghost of a woman who had long since abandoned ship, lost not at sea but far closer to home.
"Is it worth it, though?" Meirion asked, casting his line out to be swallowed by the waves. "Really worth it?"
"I asked your grandfather the same question, when your mam left us."
"And?"
"I dun' know." His father shrugged. "I still don't know. I'll only know the answer to that if I catch the damn thing."
"Not if I catch it first, 'nhad."
The old man smiled.
"No, mab, not if you catch it first."
"Do you think we'll ever catch it?"
"Ahab got his whale, didn't he? Sir Galahad got his Grail. That prince, Sid Arthur, found his Nirvana . . ."
Bathed in moonlight they sat there, moonlight and silence becoming one and the same thing, broken only by their dual silhouettes, until, just as the sky was beginning to pale, a twitch, and Meirion's father, with the reactions of a spider catching its prey, tugged on his net. And Meirion, his eyes tired and ringed with rheum, thought he caught a flash of silver trapped within.