thee streamside companion & angler's frequent respite

treatise, pomes, fine etchings & lyrics re. and not re. flyfishing (with an angle)

Friday, July 08, 2005

new year's 1804

Corps! Attention! We all snap to, quick likes -- even York pulls up, straight and smart. It’s snowing even harder now, and the big Virginian, he doesn't utter --- doesn’t move. He just a stands there before us, looking at us -- hard. I don’t move, not a fucking inch. The big redhead marches up to us and to a man -- gives us the glass, deep, deep down vision of our inner accounts and motives whatever it was a creeping round insides our hearts, is my speculation.

The sun was a coming up and Clark stepped to me. I present my musket and he grabs it: Goodrich.... I kept my tongue from a wriggling free. How’s the fishing, private.
A bit slow, sir, I says, and take the weapon back. Clark, he walks down the line: Colter, Werner, Paddy, Bonny Billy, the Fields boys... the all gets the heavy glass. Finally, he circles back in front of all of us. Gentlemen, he goes, I wish you all a happy new year. A couple of the boys mumble back a happy new year to him, but it sounded more like feet crunching in the snow. York, fetch the small barrel and some cups. Gentlemen, at your ease. Paddy pipes up: A hip-hip! And we all goes: Hooray! And York comes a trundling out with a small barrel and three tin cups. Line up, boys, goes the Captain. And we all step in front of York, who’s a gripping the keg upon his hip while the captain measures out a tolerable glug glug of the sweet, red phlegm cutter. And the boys, they was all meek like: Thank ya, Captain. Much obliged, sir. Best to ya, sir. And the big redhead, he was a nodding and a smiling as the boys took a sniff and poured it on down. It was York providing most of the commentary: Ere ya go, mon, put dis in yir kitchen. Dat’s right, mon. Always sovereign, dis ere. Go wan, mon. Ya drinkin’ it or ya courtin’ it? Dere tis. Tunes up dat whistle, mon. The wind began to die a little but the snow kept coming down, real pretty. I decided to go and look at the river for a spell. Have a smoke, maybe and just contemplate the situation and the surroundings.

The river was a glowing full of slow emptiness and a glowing full of the wholeness of the waking world. I drank it in as sure as I drank down the Captain’s port. I rolled the silence over in my mind and filled my pipes with all that was there. I’m amazed at how one -- the emptiness -- wraps up the other -- the wholeness. And I’m amazed at how the wholeness swallows up the empty. That’s the mystery. Nature going full chisel -- everything and nothing at once. This fills me up and my hart rises up to snatch it, like a trout gulping a mayfly off the current.

My ma was always up at first light, pipe curling, porrige on the swing and a laughing at the dogs running in circles around hir. Slow, slow, slow. The river moves so slow, so sure. I wish for the patience of the river and the patience of the rocks. I want to carry the wholeness in my one hand and carry the nothingnesss in the other. Carry thum back to camp and shove thum in my kit -- wrapped in the skin of a doe and tied fast with silver string.

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

What drives man to seemingly always fail at noticing the small things in life; to have to step away from everything else to take a long, hard look at the minutae for a greater sense of being?
It is a simple precept, but also something that is so taken for granted that it seems sometimes impossible to achieve. All that is required is a respite, or a fragment of solitude. Look in, look out, look around... and be ready to recognize that which you so dearly require to survive. It is the little things in life.

-Snap

2:38 AM  

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