Monday, September 29, 2008

A fish wearing a breast plate? A true story:

Here's one for Alan and Jane Vollmer and all the Vollmer clan in the northwoods and elsewhere:
There was an old lunkerfish
who'd been inhabiting a northern
Wisconsin lake, Wunderken,
for years and years
and years;
nobody could catch him
(or it might have been a her)
though the townsfolk had been trying
for years and years
and years;
tourists would ask
'any good fishing around here?'
and the locals would say nope
and they said that
for years and years
and years;
they planned for one of them
to land the Wunderken monster
locally, in-house,
but they'd been trying in vain
for years and years
and years;
the old, great and mightly strong fish
a northern pike
just cruised by from time immemorial
and snapped their lines
with ease
and had worn their snagged
and severed lures
like a breastplate of bangles,
carrying their vicious hooks in her flesh
for years and years
and years;
I saw this legend once
as I snorkled beneath Wunderken
on a sunny day;
something shiny and moving fast
caught my eye through my facemask
as the sun shone down through the water
and reflected
off the trailing lures,
copper spinners and ill-conceived
man-made tricks meant to ultimately fool
the wise denizen;
How majestically she wore them!
armor hard-earned,
a finny knight in shining armor
she was;
year by year, endlessly, the townsfolk
circled the lakeshore and spun a thick web
across it in their little boats
staring down
staring down for a sight of this
creature that I - an interloper,
not a hopeful local,
had fortuitously and graciously seen
- you see, I was not hunting her -
but the finned magician was too smart
for these trick-trying "masters"
whose lines were futilely snapped like thread
or bitten through
if heavier gauge;
their garage-hung landing nets
eventually rotted
and the new ones they bought
likewise
over the years and years
mouldered and went
to crumbly, holey mesh,
sometimes with the help
of gnawing mice;
while the snapping pike
gathered more and more
decorations on her chest,
medals
of the mortal combats
thrust upon her
by the tiring fishermen;
Is she still in Lake Wunderken?
I wouldn't know
for I haven't been up there
for years and years
and years
but I'm guessing she still rules
the deep waters of that tiny lake
and will
until the eventual weight
of her albatrossian lure collection
holds her
to a lakey grave
but she won't be caught
no matter how many
years and years
and years
go by.
[David Dix 10-29-08]

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