June 24th, 2012
Link • Audio, Poems • 7 Comments
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Hope Coulter
MORNING HAUL
Just as, every morning,
my grandfather checked his trotlines,
throwing out gar and snapping turtles,
pulling in bream and catfish
and sometimes a bass
green-wet turning white in the sun,
so I, in a shallower world,
check the e-mail that came in the night,
throwing out ugly ones
with viral attachments like teeth.
What a decline
from the mist
coming off
the pond, the slanting
sun, the knobby
knees of the cypress, the long
walk
back up the pier.
Great poem. How very true. Now we get up and check the night’s email haul, so little of which is actually worth anything. At least when you check the trot lines, there’s a chance you can eat or sell what you catch.
Well you can sign up to receive the daily poem by email and then you’ll always get at least one worth reading! Sorry, I had to.
The words have faded into the brick street and cannot be read–too much black and white. Can this be fixed? Thanks.
Oh no, I thought I fixed it! Can you hit refresh and see if it’s still doing that? What browser (and version) are you using?
Thanks for sending the email which brought me back here. Now the white background is enough of an overlay to the brick street so that I can read. Thank you for the follow up.
A fine comparison, and I too feel the decline though I wonder if any of us are physically up to the level of labor of our grandparents whether in meals cooked or miles walked to work or hours at study. It is the email–and I spend hours on the internet–coaxing us to pay attention to a much bigger sphere minute by minute. We’d have to eat some part of the mushroom to get back to the older and harder life, where there may or may not have been more inner harmony.
i don’t like
being here
last
yet
i appreciate
your snaky
formatting ways