Two decades ago today on Earth Day, a sunny Sunday, I lived the experience that became Chapter One of Philadelphia on the Fly.
Time . . . FLYS.
Happy Earth Day 2021
— rPs 04 22 2021
Posts Tagged Poetry
Earth Day 2021
Cold Solstice Holidays
Cold Solstice Holidays . . .
December Brook
(NY 12 2018)
Open water remains. Cold, clear, high visibility no match for the fishes obscura.
Was that a trout? Was that a bass? Was it a reflection, of something else, something not even a fish? Daylight flies faster than the fisher.
Retired to the warm indoor, reading and the contemplation of visual art returns to front focus.
Moving Water by Dave Hall
Moving Water
by Dave Hall
hardcover, 50 pp.
Blaine Creek
Dave Hall, an artist of works in oil, has Moving Water give an illustrated meditation, poetry and brushwork combined, in a sublime 10-minutes of illuminated manuscript. Recommended.
Back Seat by Henry Hughes
Back Seat with Fish
by Henry Hughes
hardcover, 303 pp.
Skyhorse Publishing
Not to take a back seat, do take a Back Seat with Fish off the shelves and buy it. Don’t miss the opportunity to immerse with an American life lived in America’s northern corners, New York and Oregon, with the fishing haunting happily in its present attendance at all times in between. Recommended.
The Art of Angling and Fishing Stories edited by Henry Hughes
The Art of Angling
edited by Henry Hughes
hardcover, 256 pp.
Everyman’s Library, Alfred A. Knopf
The greater corpos (including, yet beyond the canon) gives a broad read in a pair, stories and poetry, presented in two attractive hardcover collected volumes edited by Dr. Hughes: The Art of Angling and Fishing Stories
Fishing Stories
edited by Henry Hughes
hardcover, 369 pp.
Everyman’s Library, Alfred A. Knopf
There are many, many literary angles as there are anglers, men, women, children who all still relish hours reading fish tales and rhymes pictured on the page in a quiet corner on a winter afternoon.
Happy Holidays.
— rPs 12 23 2018
The White Fly
The White Fly . . .
The White Fly
(imitates the mayfly, genus Ephoron)
The poet, the poetic, part of me has always enjoyed finding a word with my name within it, and being born in August, all things keen to the eighth month of the calendar year attract me.
The insect known as the White Fly to fly fishers, the mayfly of the genus Ephoron, a prime hatch of August, is then right there on my short summer favorites list.
White Fly kebari for tenkara can be tied in a most simple manner. My recipe:
Hook: size 10-16, dry fly
Body: 6/0 thread, white
Hackle: Deer belly hair, white
The body is sparse, light, and deer belly hair adds bouyancy. Fish the fly on an August evening and catch brown trout, or smallmouth bass, or panfish, even channel catfish will rise to this fly on select clear and cobbled rivers in the American northeast.
The remainder of the time I stay true to the crayfish, and other creatures of the subaqueous realm, with some variant of my Green Guarantee.
The Green Guarantee
(NYC 08 2018)
— rPs 08 29 2018
Postscript: poetic disclosure; my first stand-alone collection – museum of buildings: poems – was first published twenty (20!) years ago this month . . .
museum of buildings: poems
(first edition, August 1998)
Lefty’s Rod
Lefty’s Rod . . .
The TFO BVK: acquired in memoriam of Bernard Victor Kreh
(NYC 04 2018)
April is National Poetry Month.
* Poetry CORNER *
April at the Bluejays
Mist belts all of the towers
At the waist,
Zipped locked lid not of lead, but of white,
Enlightened.
Wind winded rests, sets in sky unscraped stillness,
All is could,
Not even the scat siren extremes sing, no,
Jazzbulance,
Do within such mists near trees are hung lamps,
Enlightened,
More or less to describe the vibe, window open,
Spring blessed,
The rest no rest beyond brief evenings in nest,
Relaxed crest;
We let the robins sing all the evening,
We give the morning to all of the doves.
* Poetry CORNER *
Along the Flow
(04 2018)
Along the flow,
With Lefty’s rod,
And by Ebisu.
Tenkara is, too,
Verses not vs. ,
Knew and new.
— rPs 04 27 2018
December’s End of the Line
December’s End of the Line . . .
Blue Friday
The silk end of a tapered tenkara line excels with a girth hitch.
(NYC 12 02 2016)
End of the Line
There is no decree,
Always though words far and wise;
An ocean in size.
The water is free
When you are lucky as we,
See to shining sea.
Pass on the noose knot.
No need to see or see not.
You just have to be.
– rPs 12 02 2016
Postscript: Holiday Fishing Forecast is Festive!
14th November, 2015
14th November, 2015 . . .
for Albert Camus
War in Europe, again.
How ironic
And how parallel
To continental
Historical cycles
This conflict has arisen
To Whenever,
To Wherever,
Perpetual war cataclysm.
We people are a species
Stuck rocking
On our own rodent wheel,
Rolling
Rock of our own
Rolling.
— ron P. swegman
— 14th November, 2015
Reflecting November Rain
(NYC 11 2015)
— rPs 11 14 2015
The Luck of “The Spring”
The Luck of “The Spring” . . .
Harlem Meer Still White. (photo taken 03 13 2014)
I made myself meet the water a few days before this St. Patrick’s Day. I caught and released one fish.
There was a sky full of helicopters, a loose chain of ambulances at emergency, and deep rumbling rolling in from the Northeast. Air, not natural, had burst from the seams and taken down a piece of Manhattan.
My day off: fishing as this was occurring. An awareness of balance, rather than a feel of guilt, charged my exploration of “The Spring” in Winter. Harlem Meer, I would learn later, was a solid white floor surround by the yellow brown fields of March. Lucky Me: I chose first a greener ground of jade where “The Spring” offered water along one of three shorelines, most of the best spread out behind a bankside fence I chose lawfully not to cross.
Hemmed within seventy-five feet of width, fifteen feet of breadth, and a depth measuring less than a rod’s length, I fished a Deer Hair, Peacock Herl, and Thread nymph of my own design. Plenty of cool casting onto the ice opened up to me on a 3.5 Level Line. Thin ice is like an immense, monolithic lily pad. Audible slides along the ice with a tug off to the depths make for a great presentation when successful. What works at an even higher level across the fishing spectrum is the same matched with a larger pattern: next an Olive Deer Hair and Floss Bucktail tied in a manner akin to a Mickey Finn, or with a sparse beard like my Green Guarantee, first described on The Global FlyFisher in 2008.
Tenkara on thin ice. (photo taken 03 13 2014)
Four extended periods of disaster noise sounded in the distance as I began to fish. The rumbles reminded my mind’s ear of the Baghdad air war thunder shown (and heard) on television during both Gulf War I and Gulf War II. The news through the fog of dust and information settled on eight dead, many injured and displaced. A gas leak? Investigation on site has not yet been engaged in full because of debris. There has been that much material mixed with potential survivors, so great care has been taken.
On the top of the hour of one, a better blast sounded on my side. Luck struck. A sudden take a foot below the ice edge began to move. No winter sluggish fish was this; I saw twice in profile a thick bass with a purpose. The silhouette was a rounded female rather than a thin pickle of a male. I feared my tippet might fray as three runs under the ice audibly shaved my line against the blade on the water’s top.
My Ebisu tenkara rod’s entire 5/5 flex was on arch display. I gripped the pine handle as if it were a solid body guitar. Grip locked in, I was able to lead the bass around a fallow pickerel weed garden to shore.
Blurry? Cold, wet hand and big, fast bass! (photo taken 03 13 2014)
I rarely lay fish on any surface for a photo except sometimes wet grass on rainy days. Skies overcast, air still, the fish remained calm and stretched as most largemouth bass will as it endured a bragging shot on packed damp soil beside my laminated ruler and Tenkara USA Ebisu. Best Honest Estimate: 15 inches, 2 plus pounds, female largemouth bass.
Tenkara can (sometimes) tackle big bass. (photo taken 03 13 2014)
The Luck of “The Spring” . . . an ironic reward, when still in winter.
* *** * *** * ***
Angle 360
Doves dived
The depths of damp spring air.
The lake,
Biifurcated between water and ice,
Reflected,
Bare branches and brick towers.
In park,
Central to the whole reality,
One bass
Followed the ledge, following,
Up above,
Something crawling, scraping.
In went it,
Down into the wet water.
When tugged,
Wink, the line squared the circle:
The One and The Other
Spirited by connection.
.
* *** * *** * ***
My First Fish of 2014
– rPs 03 17 2014
Postscript: Read about the Green Guarantee at The Global FlyFisher by following this link:
http://globalflyfisher.com/writings/small-fry/pic.php?id=4614
Tenkara Takes Manhattan 