The Mending Line

Poetry, alliterative/allegorical

August Macke, Anglers on the Rhine, 1907. Lenbachhaus, Munich.

(The style and theme of this poem is supposed to imitate the alliterative poetry of the late Middle Ages. Things like the Pearl poem, or Dream of the Rood. It was submitted to the 2022 Annual Sacred Poetry Contest in Houston and didn’t win or get any kind of mention. Part of the judge’s notes to all the contests addressed how he thought that this kind of poetry was too didactic… so… I figure, if nothing else, it was a good exercise in anachronisms…)

After mass we went of obligation to leisure on the lake,
Togetherly our two rods whisper-whipping without wind,
Conferring cad flies to fish, the while wroughting ripples,
Which ring-whirled on the water most attractively:
In me my own thought-pool too echoed ponderously,
How the canon quoted Christ and, by Matthew, said
That those thunder-sons should fish for men instead;

These thoughts a trout disturbed with leap and splash.
In likeness I splashed the fisher’s silence, this son saying,
“Father, how are we like the fish?” For, focus on the fly I forgot.
As if he had not heard, he began prescriptively pointing,
An angler’s eye fixed where big-bodied Brook were breaking,
“Cast here, son” he said, “and gently make your mend.”
So with bated breath, and aiming at, I let lean loop unbend.

Some mere moment after mending there was a subtle strike,
Cleric-like my hands shot heavenly for wholly hook to set,
And that fat fish took the blissful bite far deep down in the lip!
For that foreign food from me it fought far near forty minutes,
But the reel that linked up lip to rod, and labor, learned it limits,
Father netted when it neared enough, and held it in handed latch,
Proudly praised me for my part in it and gloried in the catch.

Then minding me at last he let, speaking simply to what I said,
“Fish fall upon the fly and die; he who hasps heaven’s hook has life.
For that forever food is knit to God’s great graceful cord.”
This allowed, he let out another long, light line most rollingly,
And our silence both ourselves resumed most pleasantly.
The fish forgot that fearful fight their fated friend had met.
And we patiently pulled plenty more before the sun had set.