Articles/Essays – Volume 49, No. 2

Ordinary and Profane Poems

1. Cosmic Soup 

Did you know everything all happened in one split 
microsecond after a cosmic pea exploded in a 
perfect vacuum? I will avoid the observation that  
all things we can observe therefore come from split  
pea soup much like Darwin concluded we did, (he  
seemed to think of us as primordial succotash), for  
that would be a cheap shot unworthy of the level of  
poetic insight I am attempting to attain but it is as  
true as true can be according to Discover magazine. 

I am now going to describe the process going on  
all about us that we don’t seem to notice or really 
give a poot about. First of all, there’s no way to  
think of this subject so forget it unless you are a  
mathematical genius. You’re just dreaming  
if you think you have it hooked like a rainbow  
trout, which is the nearest comparison to universal  
truth I can come to in lieu of quantum physics so  
let’s be clear about it:  

If you can drop a dry fly upon just the right spot  
and a rainbow snaps it leaping up out of the water 
and for a split second everything is being created 
like a scythe of light up from God’s hand flashes, 
slashes the surface in myriad planes of iridescence, 
while the trout hovers an afterimage in the center

of your mind forever exploding like the first burst 
of your being radiated outward cosmos upon  
cosmos, then there’s nothing I can tell you about 
Creation in an instant because you’ve already seen 
it for yourself. 

2. Hyper-trout 

I kicked myself as a dumb kid because I didn’t  
know trout fight for their lives before they arrive  
on your plate any more than I knew we  
implausibly do what rabbits do, but I knew at nine 
I was learning fast, being primed by my life among 
adults: I just needed the right words! 

The first time I saw a cutthroat caught, Uncle Ken 
had hooked him, fly-rod bent double as a wet 
branch. I at the edge of a narrow stream viewed  
the struggle though tangles & limbs & leaves in  
sharp tableaux. I projected my senses inside the  
bright fighting trout as he leaped and dove and  
spun a thrashing web of nylon line cutting knives 
of light into the stream. This was serious business, 
not a game of love where the winner leaps the net 
to shake the loser’s hand. Uncle Ken meant to eat 
him & the cutthroat knew it. 

Finally, in the bend of his weight, the trout gave in.  
Taken from the net it took to subdue his  
movements, he struggled against the finger in his 
gill & the hand that held him up to the light & 
bragged of his size. Proud as a little god quelled in  
tranquility he let the gravity take him where he had 
never been in days of sheening underwater blue  
weightless splendor. He hung in Uncle Ken’s  
hand unwilling as a stolen piece of heaven in a  
painting by one of the masters. 

It seemed his gleaming scales glared like sullen 
eyes, the bright slash of red at his throat like a war  
medal. As it hung limpish and pinkish with no  
more to say, I realized kindly Uncle Ken had  
conquered him like slicing a king’s tongue from  
the whispering stream. He smacked its head with  
the hilt of his hunting knife, tossed it into a wicker  
basket with the other dead fish.  

I could never understand their pride, both of the  
trout and the man who had deceived him, for I  
knew then the trout was proud he slipped seemly 
as Narcissus back into the stream in my mind  
where he still swims. A net would scoop through  
the free running stream and he would struggle  
inside waterlessness even as we in limbic systems  
struggle in networks of nerves & veins & arteries  
& instincts we don’t understand, foregone 
conclusions foregoing the logic of trout, for if 
Nature has a forethought, it is a cutthroat trout.

3. Tying Flies 

My eldest brother, Irv, seventeen years my senior,  
I being thirteen at the time, taught me the  
mysteries of rainbow trout, how they hide in the  
inner places you might not expect in a million  
years where the dark currents swirl as they meet  
beneath surfaces brimming with quick little  
mirrors of themselves, how their eyes are alive  
with bright sights of you looking for them and to  
deceive them is illusion.  

To catch them you must believe the same thing,  
that what you offer is real as your own life and  
then they may believe you and accept the barb. 
It seemed to me a deep agreement to die together,  
they at the end of your imagination, you with them  
beginning to absorb your own death. My brother 
Irv told me as man to man, Ronnie, if you want to  
feed on Rainbows or Cutthroats (also known as  
Natives) you must outwit them. 

Tying your own flies is the key to everything. He  
told me to take a naked hook size eight or so, fix it 
sideways in the jaws of a clamp. There are two 
types of flies to consider making: wet or dry. Wet 
flies sink under the surface, dry flies float. I 
learned from Irv and took it from there myself, 
looked up various flies with all kinds of hackles, &  
tufts of feathers plucked from roosters’ necks, 
intertwined all kinds of makeshift hair & fur.

I’d weave these with ease winding my threads to 
prick at a lip and lick the pinched cheek of a 
cutthroat; yet for the radiant rainbow I’d look up 
exotic names: August Dun & Allerton, Brown 
Adder & Black June, Beaverkill & Bluebottle, 
Cinnamon & Royal Coachman, Cahill & Cow 
Dung & Deer Fly & Dorset, Green Drake & 
Golden-eyed Gauze Wing.  

I’d be specific with Peacock & Iron-blue Dun, 
Neversink & Orange Black, the Scarlet Ibis wound 
blood red as a slap of bloated mosquito. Lady of 
the Lake I’d make out-of-focus weave unlike 
Jenny Spinner with a speck of discontent. A 
Soldier Gnat I’d spin to pluck its little lyre & twist 
a last kiss of Judas in a burst of cold fire! 

4. Unto the Watery Breach 

Oh I was gladiator now and invented my own 
green sparks, purple burrs, splintered peacock, 
wrapped silk of liquid ivory, pied with tiny eyes. 
I’d speck the eddies in swift waters and riffles with 
firecracker colors caught like still shots, the killing  
flies like freeze frames of a tiny fireworks display 
to the eyes of amazed trout.  

Irv told me my odd inventions would confuse Utah 
fish whose brains are so dull they don’t really feel 
pain when you yank them by the lip. Secretly I 
never believed this. Nevertheless, I’d roll my
invisible thread of nylon line across the surface of 
a stream or deep lake swirling with the sputtering 
hits of trout like images in your mind as you try to 
find the exact word. 

Writing poems is not unlike dry or wet  
skimming & dipping skillfully the depths, teasing  
your brain into snapping at insights, tricky ideas  
you tie yourself, barbed with killing truths you do 
not guess until you hook them upon alluring lies. 
You must expect success adrift the sky with each 
whipcast allowed as you break the water surface 
like a crystal dish into splinters, multiple glimpses 
tricked by appetite, a speck of a trick beckoned by 
dread and blink of wire sweet as courtesy to nettle 
the tongue in sweet seeming like flattery uncoiled. 

Dangerous business this, fly-fishing and poetry.  
You always risk the poem will slip off the hook 
and dive deep back into its freedom. When that 
happens you can kiss your song goodbye, dine on 
beans instead of flakes of white manna, stand 
dumbly as an Israelite surprised to find his 
breakfast of pure white flashes vanished. Floating 
snowflakes melt but dead fish stink when unruly 
rainbow trout fall from the sky to those who don’t 
know how to clean them properly or at least 
attempt an explanation.

5. Fireworks 

I must warn you: to attempt to fly-fish or write 
poems, your disordered tortured thoughts will flit 
about you like a mini-fireworks show, each  
bursting with a feathered barb that kills. 

Albeit and wherefore I’m in a warning mode I 
need say the foregoing was really prelude to what I 
don’t want to talk about but must. Whereas I 
cannot find my words, I’m looking. 
I play with rabbits or go fish for trout like a 
stream-side Grizzly all growls and grimaces. I 
wait to transmute pain into beauty as she the she 
bear waits to transmute beauty into pain. 

I say she not because of political correctness nor 
gender entrapments of my own devising, but 
because words sound like a slap of claws when I’m 
cranky at sights beyond my reach.  

I clench two empty fists and I grind my jaws at 
night as I sit in my easy-boy chair and try to 
dream myself into being by flying blind with the 
most daring flashes of imagination. 

Searching for creatures to realize my haze, I’ve 
likened trout to the instant when everything blew 
into being with a big assist by God and the big 
bang and that’s just the beginning of persistence. 

Poets are brothers of rainbows and cutthroats.