Who is Catching Whom

The premise of who is catching whom is just below the surface every time I set out to be on water.  Whether piercing bait (yes, I still bait fish and consider it an equal chance to be on water), or tying on a fly - from the bank or in the depths - the simple reality comes across loud and clear.  It might not be me who is in charge of this desire to be on water and catch the allusive and elusive prey. It might be the water that is really luring me out and hooking me - no less allusive and elusive.  Or, perhaps the fish.

There is affirmation of this understood yet still unknown truth that lay afoot the passion of the chase in the simple poem, The Hound of Heaven:

“I FLED Him, down the nights and down the days;   

  I fled Him, down the arches of the years;   

I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways   

    Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears   

I hid from Him, and under running laughter.            5

      Up vistaed hopes I sped;   

      And shot, precipitated,   

Adown Titanic glooms of chasmèd fears,   

  From those strong Feet that followed, followed after.   

      But with unhurrying chase,” - Francis Thompson, “The Hound of Heaven”

It is the affirmation that that which has us in its passionate grip is somehow the thing which we ourselves hold onto because of our passion toward it.  Caught or catching, who can say.  

Standing chest high in waters, I realized that the trout I had hoped to woo had somehow already started wooing me.  Long before I cast my caddis nymph toward the riffles, I had already been hooked. “One ON.” But more than likely it should have and always still should be yelled, “Tom ON.”  Who is catching whom? River, stream, lake, trout, sunshine, open-air, bass, salmon, nature, fisher, poet, painter? Who, I ask.

This intuited yet underground relationship is really part of the mythic and mystic allure of the craft of yielding to the call.  I mean, come on, would any of us buy half the shit we buy if we were not somehow being reeled in by an unknown mother of a fish or poem or painting - at least in our own minds.  Something greater than just the one simple act of entering a stream, or catching a fish, or writing a poem, or painting a canvas is afoot. There is an energetic pull for convergence.  We long to be wed to something greater.  

Aren’t we all snagged on the great gossamer tippet of eternity.  Don’t we all believe that we will cash in on the big one and join the angelic throng of fisher-folk or artists on high and from all time.  That great heavenly cloud of water-side, or manuscript-side witnesses. That pen-ultimate trip and cast and catch that will allow us to cry atop our lungs’s capacity “I have the biggest catch of my whole damned life.”  Or, “I have just penned my absolute and quintessential poem.” And then, knowingly, tilt our head to the side, don a trickle of blood from the mouth - just along the chin line - and drop over dead. Having performed and been performed upon in the greatest ceremony of life.  We had been caught; we had caught. We wrote, and we were written.

There it is.  This friend, is your ticket out of church.  This is the grand mystic craft and mythic quest that all humans of worth have set and are set upon.  This is the passion of the divine. Surely any minister of worth would gladly sign your docket, stamp your pass, and let you out on such glorious and good behavior.  If you can acknowledge the divine craft of entering a stream, or of writing a poem, then you have given in to the divine pull and merged with a greater-than-you. Is that not the definition of the spiritual?

I think this was the thought amid the penning of my poem “Gentle Falls”.

Gentle Falls

Gentle falls

The silent foot

Upon the stones

Of time;

Wading through

Th'glorious streams

And watching

For a sign;

Of darting forth

Or rolling o’er

How e’er the

Fish will out.

Revealed to

One who holds

The reel and slowly

Moves about.

Who sets the

Hatch one finds

So near upon

The end of line;

Who casts it back

And puts on power

To land for

Fish to find.

Who sets the hook

And who is set

upon by tethered

meal.

Who is reeling

in the catch

And who is

being reeled.

I it is

Upon the line

What end

I cannot say;

Nor know

If I pull in

Or out - just

Pull with no delay.

Who spies the

Fly what gentle

Falls on riffles

Of the stream,

Who chases down

With swiftest speed

And bites upon

Its dream.

Write the words

Upon my heart

Of how to catch

The fish

Or how to flee

From fisher-folk

Far and away

My only wish.

Of how to dress,

And poach it well

And place it on

The dish

But once

It is devoured

And, no more

In space or time

It will be

my eternal Quest

to find Who’s me

or mine.

And sure I am

That oft’ will change

Of who has who

On line.

Who has not painted a barn on a canvas, or written a few lines of free verse and felt a yielding to some larger thing.  An entrance into a bigger reality. This is the nature of craft. We come along side of another great stream of meaning and we conjoin and confluence takes place.  We become one with the process and get lost in it. Who and whom are essentially lost, hidden, or unimportant. And then we emerge and continue on as if we were one single being and no longer ALL.

Don’t deny it.  Think of your craft.  What is it you lose yourself into and among?  It is there you shall find your spirit. I do not pose a good or ill to where it is we lose ourselves.  That is yours to assess.  

First, find where you have confluence.  Then decide if you will give your life for such a river.  Maybe you know four good streams to be astream amid. So be it.  Know them, though. The craft will be the richer and the confluence all the mightier.  Like it or not, there is, “One ON.” 

Who is catching whom?