The fishing was pretty good last week. I know because I watched Captain Balloon catch a lot of fish while I watched.

Captain Balloon

I often go fishing

with Captain Balloon.

He takes me to spots that are his.

He tells me to cast

where he knows

there are fish,

and when I don’t catch them,

he does.

Captain Balloon,

a cigar in his mouth,

starts whooping

and calls me downstream

to watch him retrieve

a trout big as his arm

but I sulk in my hole and refuse.

I try to pretend

that Captain Balloon

is not catching a trout when he is.

When I snap off my fly,

Captain Balloon

says if you don’t cast now, I will.

While I fumble

and fiddle, trying to tie

another fly onto my tippet,

Captain Balloon latches

onto a monster

and drags it up flopping before me.

Captain Balloon possesses a fly

that, regretfully, I don’t possess.

It looks like a mucous drenched

hummingbird turd,

but it catches the fish

while my fly does not,

so I ask if perhaps

he might spare one.

When I get home,

I swear that I won’t

go fishing with Captain Balloon

ever again,

but then the phone rings.

Want to go fishing?

Yeah, sure.