Fish On A Stick
It's getting to be the time of year when I don't bring a rod, just some little flies and some tippet, when I walk in to the high streams up from the Gallatin. Since I can't cast to these pools, I just tie a fly to
the tippet and dangle it down through the deadfall on a stiff willow branch. It's enough to watch the brookies coalesce from beneath the logs and undercut and take the fly, so sometimes I snip the hook off at the bend.
These places always make me think of this Yeats poem:
The Song of Wandering Aengus
I went out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread;
And when white moths were on the wing,
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.
When I had laid it on the floor
I went to blow the fire aflame,
But something rustled on the floor,
And some one called me by my name:
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran
And faded through the brightening air.
Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.
Comments:
Stick On A Fish...
Lightening Round
I went out to the river, hungry at its banks
it pulled hungrily at me, I let it pull.
Rod in hand I cast into the slow seam,
Nymphs, down dropping down,
felt a rock, another rock, then a quick tick.
Fish after fish I gathered there,
by the big tree where the rivers met.
When I let my last fish go, dusk and drakes
were on the wing, descending, descending.
I changed to a dry fly and let it fall.
Silent as the dew it fell, and where
it landed I couldn't see, but landed all the same
and took another trout beneath the silver moon.
I heard the river all night in my dreamless sleep.
Tangled in its currents I rose at dawn
and slipped back down to its wandering edge.
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