May 2012
2 posts
December 2011
0 posts
November 2011
8 posts
Speckled Trout
by Ron Rash
Water-flesh gleamed like mica:
orange fins, red flankspots, a char
shy as ginseng, found only
in spring-flow gaps, the thin clear
of faraway creeks no map
could name. My cousin showed me
those hidden places. I loved
how we found them, the way we
followed no trail, just stream-sound
tangled in rhododendron,
to where slow water opened
a hole to slip a line in,
and lift as...
October 2011
16 posts
To a Trout of the Brook
by Peter Pindar
Why flyest thou away with fear? Trust me there’s nought of danger near; I have no wicked hooke, All covered with a snaring bait, Alas! to tempt thee to thy fate, And drag thee from thy brook. Oh, harmless tenant of the flood, I do not wish to spill thy blood; For nature unto thee Perchance hath given a tender wife, And children dear, to charm thy life, As she...
The Trout
by John Montague
for Barrie Cooke
Flat on the bank I parted
Rushes to ease my hands
In the water without a ripple
And tilt them slowly downstream
To where he lay, tendril-light,
In his fluid sensual dream.
Bodiless lord of creation,
I hung briefly above him
Savouring my own absence,
Senses expanding in the slow
Motion, the photographic calm
That grows before action.
As...
September 2011
20 posts
Fishing By Moonlight
by Jim Yaussy Albright
The lake was waiting for me, though I was very late.
A bright trout came to the fly, went back in the water
taking all the light with him.
The moon brushed out of the pines, cast its glow on the lake.
I drifted, fly drifted through the silver-blue night.
A silver trout pulled on the fly, let go.
“Bestir yourself; time to be on your way.”
The moon...
The Trout
by Amy Lowell
Naughty little speckled trout, Can’t I coax you to come out? Is it such great fun to play In the water every day? Do you pull the Naiads’ hair Hiding in the lilies there? Do you hunt for fishes’ eggs, Or watch tadpoles grow their legs? Do the little trouts have school In some deep sun-glinted pool, And in recess play at tag Round that bed of purple flag? I have...
The Drunken Fisherman
by Robert Lowell
Wallowing in this bloody sty, I cast for fish that pleased my eye (Truly Jehovah’s bow suspends No pots of gold to weight its ends); Only the blood-mouthed rainbow trout Rose to my bait. They flopped about My canvas creel until the moth Corrupted its unstable cloth. A calendar to tell the day; A handkerchief to wave away The gnats; a couch unstuffed with storm Pouching...
August 2011
25 posts
Intimations of Mortality
by Jim Yaussy Albright
A late August evening on the lake.
All seems calm, but
everything is hurtling at breakneck speed
through time and space.
Each day dies a little more;
each coming of summer dark presages
the impending onset of the season of darkness.
The trout know, and rush to intercept
the swirling fragments of life that will
stave off starvation in the ice time.
They fight the...
