Flyfishing guide, writer-in-residence at multiple foundations and camps, artist, TFFJ contributor and friend, Cameron Scott knows how to write a poem and teach your kids how to catch fish.

Dry Steel

Tomorrow I’ll go fishing

down the long benched canyon,

with songbirds in the shade.

I’ll see mule deer and wild turkey

as I walk cow paths on steep sided

slopes of prickly pear and bunchgrass,

through thickets of poison oak

and blackberry vines. Red osier

will whip back into place.

Russian olives and rosehips

will resist. Standing in the river,

you are fighting, I am fighting.

We are finding our way home.

I’ll slip a yellow knife behind your

red gill plate and bleed your body.

Sing to me brother as I sing

in praise to you—it is hard to be

a pacifist in a world so full of death.