Based on news broadcast.
He stands tall in his boat drifting the Tigris,
paying out arm's lengths of gossamer net quickly
with hard practiced hands cherishing a
private peace in the baby's breath morning
awakening a people's memories in Baghdad.
Staccato reports of machine gun fire shatter
his naive moment with the authority of a screeching
alarm clock savaging a beautiful dream.
Peace departs on its hectic bat wings in daylight.
He winces and stands paragon straight
defying someone to shoot a fisherman
hoping for thirty kilos of Tigris white fish.
Net vanishes fatefully, slipping into the
coffee colored Tigris -- an ever pregnant
Mother of Civilization flowing through
the ages and Baghdad as a swollen
irrigation canal. The net is out
for white fish but sometimes traps
another species rolling in graceful
sightless movement of aquatic ballet,
uplifted and spun magnificently in the opaque
depths of its amniotic fluid.
He's been wistful of late having caught the other
species and labored as an uncompensated Charon.
The machine gun pummels the hard air
not affecting his Quixotic fisherman's
concentration upon technique! Strategy!
A tug! A fish! Good! Two tugs! Fish!
His chiseled face brightens as he drifts
unflinching in the shadow of the bridge,
cheered by modest portents of rising fortunes,
chattering machine gun be damned.
A tug! He nods, counting dinars toward
petrol for the faithful Evinrude. The net
draws down suddenly with the familiar strain.
He pulls a madness of net, shaking his head,
brightness fading upon the mask of Charon.
There's a fish! Another fish, then the shoe
with pale bloated ankle emerges not sainted
by millennia.
Poetry by Peter J. Kautsky
Read 651 times
Written on 2006-10-26 at 01:30
Tags Tigris
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Fishing the Tigris
He stands tall in his boat drifting the Tigris,
paying out arm's lengths of gossamer net quickly
with hard practiced hands cherishing a
private peace in the baby's breath morning
awakening a people's memories in Baghdad.
Staccato reports of machine gun fire shatter
his naive moment with the authority of a screeching
alarm clock savaging a beautiful dream.
Peace departs on its hectic bat wings in daylight.
He winces and stands paragon straight
defying someone to shoot a fisherman
hoping for thirty kilos of Tigris white fish.
Net vanishes fatefully, slipping into the
coffee colored Tigris -- an ever pregnant
Mother of Civilization flowing through
the ages and Baghdad as a swollen
irrigation canal. The net is out
for white fish but sometimes traps
another species rolling in graceful
sightless movement of aquatic ballet,
uplifted and spun magnificently in the opaque
depths of its amniotic fluid.
He's been wistful of late having caught the other
species and labored as an uncompensated Charon.
The machine gun pummels the hard air
not affecting his Quixotic fisherman's
concentration upon technique! Strategy!
A tug! A fish! Good! Two tugs! Fish!
His chiseled face brightens as he drifts
unflinching in the shadow of the bridge,
cheered by modest portents of rising fortunes,
chattering machine gun be damned.
A tug! He nods, counting dinars toward
petrol for the faithful Evinrude. The net
draws down suddenly with the familiar strain.
He pulls a madness of net, shaking his head,
brightness fading upon the mask of Charon.
There's a fish! Another fish, then the shoe
with pale bloated ankle emerges not sainted
by millennia.
Poetry by Peter J. Kautsky
Read 651 times
Written on 2006-10-26 at 01:30
Tags Tigris
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