I've finished life's chores assigned to me,
So put me on a boat headed out to sea.
Please send along my fishing pole
For I've been invited to the fishin' hole.
Where every day is a day to fish,
To fill your heart with every wish.
Don't worry, or feel sad for me,
I'm fishin' with the Master of the sea.
......
I envied my wife her nightly visions.
She'd lay each one proudly on the bed
like a plump, iridescent fish,
and ask me to identify it.
Some nights I'd even manage to trap
my own by concentrating hard,
submerging the net into blue-black waters.
......
For Thomas Edwards Wanning
Think of the storm roaming the sky uneasily
like a dog looking for a place to sleep in,
listen to it growling.
Think how they must look now, the mangrove keys
lying out there unresponsive to the lightning
in dark, coarse-fibred families,
where occasionally a heron may undo his head,
......
You're in this dream of cotton plants.
You raise a hoe, swing, and the first weeds
Fall with a sigh. You take another step,
Chop, and the sigh comes again,
Until you yourself are breathing that way
With each step, a sigh that will follow you into town.
That's hours later. The sun is a red blister
Coming up in your palm. Your back is strong,
Young, not yet the broken chair
......
When I go back from Billy's place I always have to roam
The mazy road, the crazy road that leads the long way home.
Ma always says, "Why don't you come through Mr Donkin's land?
The footbridge track will bring you back." Ma doesn't understand.
I cannot go that way, you know, because of Donkin's dog;
So I set forth and travel north,, and cross the fallen log.
Last week, when I was coming by, that log had lizards in it;
And you can't say I stop to play if I just search a minute.
I look around upon the ground and, if there are no lizards,
......
On the jetty - in the mist - dry under ponchos
Surf pounding at concrete - biting at the shore
Glowing gaslamp beckoning gnats - freezing on the tank
Poles in hands - lines in water - standing in entwined silence
Coho spawning - swallowing offered bait
Father and Son sharing heartbeats and serenity
An art or a sport
Some whisper a ‘crazy obsession’,
And like Golf where age won't cut short
At least our pastime won't lead to depression.
A hook and a line
Much patience, sun balms,
No rush when your world is sublime
With glistening waters and a horizon of wavering palms.
......
Grandfather...
Will you play with me today...
Will you take me fishing...
Will you show me your way...
Will you tell me the difference
Between a crane and a loon...
Where’s your best fishing spot
At the Audubon Park lagoon...
......
WHY! who makes much of a miracle?
As to me, I know of nothing else but miracles,
Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan,
Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky,
Or wade with naked feet along the beach, just in the edge of the
water,
Or stand under trees in the woods,
Or talk by day with any one I love--or sleep in the bed at night with
any one I love,
Or sit at table at dinner with my mother,
......
1
As I ebb'd with the ocean of life,
As I wended the shores I know,
As I walk'd where the ripples continually wash you Paumanok,
Where they rustle up hoarse and sibilant,
Where the fierce old mother endlessly cries for her castaways,
I musing late in the autumn day, gazing off southward,
Held by this electric self out of the pride of which I utter poems,
Was seiz'd by the spirit that trails in the lines underfoot,
The rim, the sediment that stands for all the water and all the
......