BROTHER JUDD
 Author: MICHAEL POLLICK

The fish could hardly be expected to remember us- 
   Two sleep-dusted Ohio boys, working a pole with Brother Blake, 
   Methodically plinking the glass of Heritage Lake. 

   He was a most agreeable fisherman, long since passed on, 
   But he understood the principle of the thing itself; 
   This sport of tricking one live into becoming a trophy or dinner 
   For those other lives with nothing better to do. 

   I loved Brother Blake, I really did. 
   He of the Pentecostal faith (one God one Name one Baptism) 
   Who spoke kindly to my mother, as he rushed her sons 
   To rattle the baitman's door;   

   We need us some frantic cold red worms; 
   We need us some possessed nightcrawlers; 
   Do we got any of them salmon eggs anywhere? 
   Fish don't bite on 'em anyway.
   (They know their own.) 

   Once, I caught a beauty. 
   A rainbow trout, with all the hidden colors of the Lord, 
   He said, 
   And my friend, who had no grasp on the subtleties of angling, 
   Bent the fish clean in two,    
   Just to show it could be done, 
   And Brother Blake, patience at its end, 
   Said "Son, don't be foolish with those fish." 
   And we put it back in the creel, 
   Feeling much like the fish must have felt   
   When he felt that first tug. 

   I don't fish much now at all.   
   But occasionally I catch myself thinking 
   About that elder of my childhood church, 
   And start feeling a little foolish   
   About all the beautiful Fish 
   I've bent in two since then...


ALL RIGHTS RESERVED BY Michael Pollick 
 Copyright � 1996 Phaedrus 
 limited electronic reprint rights granted