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]