I'd watched him tie the fly, then catch
that fish, had seen it slurping away
in the big Clay Bank Pool on the South Branch
of the Oconto River, had tried for it myself,
slashing away with a floppy tip-dead castoff
South Bend nine-and-a-half footer someone
had dredged up for me from a far back corner
of the woodshed in Green Bay. I laid out
slashing cast, floated a soaked Brown Hackle
everywhere but over the big fish, for some reason failed
to put him down, finally give up and yelled
for my uncle. I'll never forget
the wonderous calm
with which he looked things over. I've modeled
my aspirations to collectedness
on the way my uncle stood
that evening on the edge
of the Clay Bank Pool, on the South Branch
of the Oconto River not far
from Suring, light dimming, a late hatch
of something big and pale and vaporous
coming off the water like slight
coalescenses of mist, mosquitoes
beginning to hum in my ear, a light breeze
in the overhanging branches of the white pines
on the far side of the stream, and just at the edge
of a midstream V in the current, over
and over again, that great, loud, leisurely insuck
of the big fish. I itched
for that fish, my mind was scoured clean
as a riffle by floods and freshets of desire. But Vince
just stood there, humming a little
to himself, finally said aloud
O.K., in the half-dark sure-fingered tied on
a flutterly-looking white thing
size of my thumb, and with his old-time
elbow-to-the-side-strictly-wrist-
and-forearm cast laid down that fly three feet above
and two inches to the right
of the rise ring, upon which the rainbow came
to the White Miller, and at that instant
arose in me on that day on the South Branch
in that fourteenth year
of what turned out to be
my life, this great, persistent yearning,
to posess that fly, to have it for my own, study it,
hold it in my hand, feel what vibrancy, what
radiance of blood it must have been
brought that big rainbow a foot
out of water, to hang blazing there
in what seemed to me
foreordination of fury!
~John Engels
About John Engels
John Engels has taught English Literature at
St. Michaels's College in Winooski, Vermont for many years. He
is the author of five books of poetry, including The Homer
Mitchell Place, Vivaldi in Early Fall, and Weather-Fear, for
which he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. He is recognized
as one of America's finest poets. He lives in Burlington, Vermont.