"On Colour" by James Ogden

"Trout Fishing" by Alexander Frederick Rolfe, date unknown

Poem, presumably by the author, from Ogden on Fly Tying by James Ogden, London, 1887

"The Fish" by Elizabeth Bishop

"The Fish" Illustration by Lucas Mehmel

I caught a tremendous fish
and held him beside the boat,
half out of water, with my hook
fast in a corner of his mouth.
He didn't fight.
He hadn't fought at all.
He hung a grunting weight,
battered and venerable
and homely. Here and there
his brown skin hung in strips
like ancient wallpaper,
and its pattern of darker brown
was like wallpaper:
shapes like full-blown roses
stained and lost through age.
He was speckled with barnacles,
fine rosettes of lime,
and infested
with tiny white sea-lice,
and underneath two or three
rags of green weed hung down.
While his gills were breathing in
the terrible oxygen
- the frightening gills,
fresh and crisp with blood,
that can cut so badly-
I thought of the coarse white flesh
packed in like feathers,
the big bones and the little bones,
the dramatic reds and blacks
of his shiny entrails,
and the pink swim-bladder
like a big peony.
I looked into his eyes
which were far larger than mine
but shallower, and yellowed,
the irises backed and packed
with tarnished tinfoil
seen through the lenses
of old scratched isinglass.
They shifted a little, but not
to return my stare.
It was more like the tipping
of an object toward the light.
I admired his sullen face,
the mechanism of his jaw,
and then I saw
that from his lower lip
- if you could call it a lip,
grim, wet, and weaponlike,
hung five old pieces of fish-line,
or four and a wire leader
with the swivel still attached,
with all their five big hooks
grown firmly in his mouth.
A green line, frayed at the end
where he broke it, two heavier lines,
and a fine black thread
still crimped from the strain and snap
when it broke and he got away.
Like medals with their ribbons
frayed and wavering,
a five-haired beard of wisdom
trailing from his aching jaw.
I stared and stared
and victory filled up
the little rented boat,
from the pool of bilge
where oil had spread a rainbow
around the rusted engine
to the bailer rusted orange,
the sun-cracked thwarts,
the oarlocks on their strings,
the gunnels- until everything
was rainbow, rainbow, rainbow!
And I let the fish go.

"Genes" by Sharon Dunn

My eleven year old son wants to fish,
he owns two rods, one saltwater,
one freshwater. He loves knives,
Bowie knives, Swiss Army
knives, "Knives like this one?"
my brother says, opening his desk
drawer and taking out a small
jackknife with antler handle.
My boy camps outdoors, begs to sleep
outside, is always shooting
arrows, rubber band guns,
he is lashing together a fort
in the backyard. He sails,
swims, kayaks and wants
to know the stars.
The outdoor hunting genes
are in the dark men in my family.
Yet I believe he is a son of light.
His joy in reading, cooking
and piano are fanned
from the tinderbox
of his father's heart.
He will save rainforest,
he will grow vegetables,
keep horses, fly his own plane.
He will make his own brave life,
he will not remake our lives
nor redeem us, nor pity us.

"Genes" by Sharon Dunn, from Refugees in the Garden: A Memoir in Poems. © The Rose Press, 2009.

"Judgment Day" by Ellis Parker Butler

Saint Peter stood at Heaven's gate,

All souls' claims to adjudicate,

Saying to some souls, "Enter in!"

"Go to Hell," to others, "you are steeped in sin."

When up from earth, with a great hubbub,

Came all the members of the Tuscarora Club.

The angel Gabriel, peering out,

Said, "What the devil is this noise about?"

"Gabe," said Peter, "There's always lots of noise

At any get-together of the Tuscarora boys --

Those are anglers and they all tell lies

About the trout that got away, their fierceness and their size --

They want to enter Heaven, for our brooks are full of trout,

But I won't have any liars, and I'll keep the whole gang out;

No liars enter Heaven, and I'll most distinctly tell

The whole danged Tuscarora Club, it has to go to Hell."

Then, at a little distance from the precious pearly gate,

The Tuscarora fellows paused to talk and cogitate;

One Barr said this, one Barr said that, McAlpin had his say,

But foxy Charley Roberts said, "This is the only way."

"You'd best leave this to me," he said. "Just let me handle Pete

and in a trice we'll be inside upon the golden street;

I'll show him that he's one of us, because he used to be,

Himself, a brother fisher, in the Sea of Galilee--

And I move you, Mr. President, we make the poor old dub

An honorary member of the Tuscarora Club."

"Agreed! Agreed!" the members cried, but Manny Barr said, "Wait!

Amend it thus: 'PROVIDED -- that he didn't fish with bait.'"

Saint Peter saw them coming but his face was hard and stern,

He had formed his resolution from which he would not turn.

Not even Roberts' palaver would ever change him so

He'd send the Tuscarorans anywhere but down below.

But now upon his countenance there came a look of pain,

He stepped from foot to foot, and then from foot to foot again.

He hailed a new-come resident, who near the portal stood,

A goodly Christian gentleman, whose name was Hubert Wood.

He said to him, "Come here, my friend, and tend awhile this gate--

Just take my place for half an hour -- I've got to urinate."

With that Saint Peter hustled off. The gate-keeper pro tem

Observed the Tuscarorans and he waved his hand at them.

"Come in! come in!" he shouted, for he was an angler, too,

And he knew that anglers, as a whole, were earth's most harmless crew.

So all the Tuscarorans got to heaven, thanks to Wood,

And the Secretary's last report says, "Fishing there is good."

"Judgment Day" by Ellis Parker Butler, 1869-1937.

"A Green Stream" by Wang Wei

Landscape by Wang Hui, Ching Dynasty

I have sailed the River of Yellow Flowers,

Borne by the channel of a green stream,

Rounding ten thousand turns through the mountains

On a journey of less than thirty miles...

Rapids hum over heaped rocks;

But where light grows dim in the thick pines,

The surface of an inlet sways with nut-horns

And weeds are lush along the banks.

...Down in my heart I have always been as pure

As this limpid water is...

Oh, to remain on a broad flat rock

And to cast a fishing-line forever!

Wang Wei, sometimes known as the Poet Buddha, lived from 701 to 761, in the Tang Dynasty.