The View from Middle Spunk Creek
The Next Hemingway?
Occasionally you read something that makes you say “Wow”. A poem in the Orange Coast Review did that to me. It reminds me of Hemingway’s Old Man and the Sea.
With permission of the author, Nathan Parsons, age 22, I reproduce it for you here.
Angler’s Valor
I was drafted into a fishing trip
my friend and I, plus our father-figures
and twenty other strangers—
the unspoken goal: to become a man.
Three days and nights to catch as many fish
as my thin arms could carry home,
it was a trial by combat–
I would fight the fish for their lives.
Nathan
As we departed from the dock
quartets of stocky, scruffy men
lipped cheap cigarettes and grumbled foul jokes
in low octaves, swearing like the sailors
they wished they could be.
The stench of doomed live bait and tobacco
masked their pitiful excuse for hygiene.
We stood wide-eyed on the bow,
trying to make each other flinch with immature tales
of sea monsters and killer fish. At night
the sea rocked us to sleep in our bunks.
I woke to the fisherman’s war cry: “Hook’s up!”
A panic, then a scramble for armaments.
The men lined the circumference of the boat,
rods and reels in hand. Then one by one
they ripped silver beasts from the sea,
turning the blue a frothy white.
Handed my weapon with orders to fight,
I lined up alongside them, pulling my first life
from the thrashing waters, a giant hook gouged
through the white of its eye. The deck
was soon overrun with shimmering life,
flopping and slapping,
choking on air.
A sudden ceasefire, an armistice,
a commotion on the deck–.
An old fisherman raked his chest
with liver-spotted hands, then clung
to the rails of the ship until his grip
went limp and he dropped flat on his back,
eye level with the fish.
“Don’t let the boys see it” said one of the men.
But it was too late. The old fisherman,
salt-stained hat beside him,
blood-burst eyes bulging,
had been dead when he hit the deck.
Jump-suited angels descended from the sky
and plucked the old man from our boat,
carrying him into Valhalla in a rusted steel cage.
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Put It On Your Calendar!
May 7. Google Amazon Books and buy your ebook version of The Reaper for $0.99. One day only. If you don’t have a kindle, nook or similar device, you can download the app (it’s free) to your smart phone.
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And, Finally…
The Old Punster strikes again:
“Tis better to have loved a short person than never to have loved a tall”
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Adios for this week. May your week be happy, healthy and prosperous, and may you find time to hug your kids and read a good book.
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