Fishing & Houses Don't Move
The short stories previously published here have morphed into a novel, or are trying to. Sixty thousand words so far, and counting, and then figuring after proper editing, I'll have to start fresh. To give me a bit of sense of accomplishment, after months of slogging, publishing here a poem I've slogged through enough.
Fishing
There must be a way to move that doesn’t involve every lead sinker I’ve laid down to catch beasts I turn around and sell. I keep hoping I’ll haul—what? Something that will make the day feel more than how.
There must be a way to come home with more than how to get a check, another way to see all these buoys, ropes, depth sounders and maps with cigarette burns just where I needed to see the depth. I keep coming up with the litter we make, mucking up the seas, as if we had nothing better to do than make things we throw away, eventually. I came to this life at sea because I loved it, but love gets tired and worn to ache and age, and I wonder.
What would it be like to head out in the dark of morning, as chilly as it might be, and feel my mouth were a sail, rather than an anxious metaphor? Rather than setting out with things I’ve put between myself and my blood, my heart, my stomach, and hands, what if I set out with only my ears flapping in the wind to gather up the song of the seabird diving into the waves for its daily bread?
Money is what everyone is after, not before. Once I traded a baseball card for a fresh peach, long before I knew about all the fancy gizmos that would save me from myself, such as this radio and cell phone and a health insurance plan owned by several international banking companies run by physics phds with new financial instruments who once dreamed of leaving this earth for another planet.
Once I heard about two professors who compared the happiness of lottery winners to that of paraplegics. After a bit, the paraplegics got more joy out of daily living. Seems that not having to do anything, of living some place else besides this place where you have to deal with your own laundry, is not the same as not being able to do what you used to; it’s worse.
I think what counts is getting closer to necessity, closer to the way your mouth works, to the way your fingers curve around—perhaps the thrashing of a fish. Seeing with your own eyes the moment the fish’s eyes go dull as you pull the hook out of its mouth and put the fish into yours.
That’s exaggerating, perhaps, but it’s the only way I know how to put what I’m after: I want to feel life between my teeth.
Elizabeth M. Burke
Long Island, Maine
03/2008
Fishing
There must be a way to move that doesn’t involve every lead sinker I’ve laid down to catch beasts I turn around and sell. I keep hoping I’ll haul—what? Something that will make the day feel more than how.
There must be a way to come home with more than how to get a check, another way to see all these buoys, ropes, depth sounders and maps with cigarette burns just where I needed to see the depth. I keep coming up with the litter we make, mucking up the seas, as if we had nothing better to do than make things we throw away, eventually. I came to this life at sea because I loved it, but love gets tired and worn to ache and age, and I wonder.
What would it be like to head out in the dark of morning, as chilly as it might be, and feel my mouth were a sail, rather than an anxious metaphor? Rather than setting out with things I’ve put between myself and my blood, my heart, my stomach, and hands, what if I set out with only my ears flapping in the wind to gather up the song of the seabird diving into the waves for its daily bread?
Money is what everyone is after, not before. Once I traded a baseball card for a fresh peach, long before I knew about all the fancy gizmos that would save me from myself, such as this radio and cell phone and a health insurance plan owned by several international banking companies run by physics phds with new financial instruments who once dreamed of leaving this earth for another planet.
Once I heard about two professors who compared the happiness of lottery winners to that of paraplegics. After a bit, the paraplegics got more joy out of daily living. Seems that not having to do anything, of living some place else besides this place where you have to deal with your own laundry, is not the same as not being able to do what you used to; it’s worse.
I think what counts is getting closer to necessity, closer to the way your mouth works, to the way your fingers curve around—perhaps the thrashing of a fish. Seeing with your own eyes the moment the fish’s eyes go dull as you pull the hook out of its mouth and put the fish into yours.
That’s exaggerating, perhaps, but it’s the only way I know how to put what I’m after: I want to feel life between my teeth.
Elizabeth M. Burke
Long Island, Maine
03/2008
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