Thought Angler

...sounds a little like
reminding, word choice and voice
in head unleashed runs back over
itself, like long winds of Jack Kerouac.

When some words settle
like boulders, impressioned and set on
making a safe crossing of white waters
for rock dwellers and ware sellers
of Cages. When Neruda was no longer
a border,
Lowell and beholden-There
I was only a Rae,
scaled into a small Armantrout
aiming upstream it seems
by heart.

Planning my path further,
the banks beckon me with moving silt lines
that shape earth
with a wand of whim. All eyes swim across all
those cummings and goings
making sparkles
above.

I take Paz at the reflection,
amassing stones
and skip the flattest ones
across the Eliotic surface,
Poundless and unpuddled,

noting ripples like run on sentences
that could race round forever,
yet are bound by body, only to be
settled on the shores
in the act of abating the volume
of poetry
with only the words of Emily,
finally.

I have caught a current in a collective
intention, wielding a hand
with a hook that looks
like a pen.
I wait, feeling for the wiggle,
a sign, message spoken
through fingertips-

this was when silence
was most sought
by the spear.






Painting by Martin Ryckaert (1587-1631), 'Fisherman in a wooded landscape' in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Catch & Release

You may have caught my gaze,
strangling my breath
by the gauge of your twisted line.
A casualty,
in a swoop of wind
disturbing the flow-
now you will let me go
for sport.
Remind me of the rules
once more,
since participation is voluntary
and mine has been cut short.
Spar and span, pick your sport,
there will always be one better.





Painting by Winslow Homer [Public domain], Fishin (1879) via Wikimedia Commons.

Lesson 1: Nature and the Soupman

Travel back to your first lesson
taught by Mother Nature.
When you learned
your parents were not the only
nor the best
teachers
about life.

We went camping,
my parents, their friends, Hercules-the dog.
We'd go to the Russian River
where there were no campsites-
you sight your spot and camp-
if you like.

They would drink and fish,
and drink like fish,
and more-it was the eighties.
Their friend, 

a man called Kevin Soupman
was fishing near me
when he caught a rainbow
trout.

He held it across both his hands,
it was shiny, slimy and squirmy-

the things kids like.
Moments later,
he said he had something for me.
He told me to hold out the palm
of my hand.
I did, eagerly.

In it,
he placed a crimson pebble.
It rolled a moment
as I tried to see it more closely
then it settled in the evening sun-
(un)still

throbbing and beating its inner drum.
Thus,

Nature and the Soupman
taught me
all I needed to know
about heartlessness.


Image By Ken Hammond / USDACornischong at lb.wikipedia [Public domain], from Wikimedia Commons.