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?