Being Here

Being Here

Fishing is the lonely sport:
for dreamers, star gazers, storm chasers.

Just a long stick of a rod and a few feathers
wrapped around a shank of bronze,
a simple reel you almost don’t need
and a pair of eyes with hawk or eagle genes.

Never mind the rain or April snow,
the rushing water, wind and air to blow
the flying line behind your head you cast
so straight to bend the elements your way.

And the tiny fly, Gordon Quill or Hendrickson,
mixed among hundreds, no thousands,
landing, sailing, flying everywhere

and you standing, leaning, bending,
peering at the swirls of life and death
running down this river clear as ice
or piercing Sunday preacher’s eye.

And then the lordly sip, the take,
the one you dreamt about,
fantasize the giant brown or rainbow
before reality sets in, if it ever does,
where losing the prize
is more exciting than the catch.

Allows you to say, “That’s fishing.
Just being here’s the thing.”
And strange as it may sound,
it’s what you really mean.

Poem by Alan Harawitz
Photo by El Pescador