Classic Poem

I have been fishing now
for nine hours, and in that time
departed all cortical things,
having turned gradually below-
light to dim strata of slime-
weed, bass and shoaled fingerlings.

Plover-like, peering offshore,
where nothing is certain, save
the infrequent rational gleam
of the lure, like a drowned flare,
on its long retrieve
signalling into the unseen.

For hours, for half a day
nothing may answer. Then—
double double tug: some cold
killer of fry, fathoms away,
reasserts a Silurian
mindless violence. Hauled

in, he will thrash, expressionless,
body one clenched limb for
sword-cuts in the deep. Sun-
fish, maybe, with daggered crest
like Neptune's helmet, gold gor-
get and turquoise menton.

Or pickerel, the miniature
barracuda, whose fine scale
is like mica or gold leaf. Some-
times I feel like a doctor
of dreams—like Jung or a sybil—
identifying, as they come

frantic into daylight, this
or that gaudy and innocent
archaism. But each pulls
the angler lakeward also, as
it sounds against the bent
spinrod and dragged reel.

I would not dare go down
into that inverted world where
symbols devour other symbols
in darkness. No, it was on-
ly this morning I woke from there—
God knows upon what impulse.











By permission of the author.