In fishing, as the moment of experience enters the future as memory, it’s prey to seizures of enlargement and general embellishing. I feel sure, however, that that steelhead weighed close to twenty-eight pounds. It’s possible–and, given a few more years of voluptuous recollection, almost certain–that the fish would have tipped the Toledoes at over thirty, making it easily conceivable that I’d hooked what would have been a new state-record steelie. But even taking the distortions of time and memory into account, ruthlessly pruning any possibility of exaggeration, carefully considering the Parallax Effect, the Water Magnification Variable, the Wishful Thinking Influence, and the El Feces del Toro Predilection, I would lay even money in the real world that that steelhead weighed at least twenty-six pounds, and would gladly wager a new car of your choice against a soggy cornflake that it was twenty-four minimum.

In that spirit, I trust you will understand that I offer a blessing when I wish for our coming years that a big one always gets away.

Tao-to-Tao

The way is
The way it is
Because that’s the way
It is,
And why.

To Be

ODE

Loins and breath.

Moonlight melting

In the throat of a calla lily.

Thickets of young maple

Just breaking bud.

All you have to be

Is who you are,

Naked beyond the body,

A touch at a time.

PALINODE

All you have to be

Is who you are?

What could have I possibly

Meant by that

If part of you

Is who you dream you could be

If you weren’t the piddling little dimwit

You actually are,

As if the “real you”

Is the one who sits around wondering who

The real you is–

Or if you’ve ever wished you were

Someone else, anybody–

An accountant in Coronado,

A dishwasher in a second-rate Omaha steakhouse–

Or if you can follow this,

Or still care,

You’re probably really screwed up

Or close enough

To be welcomed as a friend.

Practice, Practice, Practice

It exacts the strictest discipline

To truly take it easy

Yet still retain the minimal

Quiver of ambition

Required for consciousness.

That’s what I’ve been working on all morning,

Stretched out on the couch

By the cabin window at Bob’s,

Watching the rain,

Without pattern,

Fall on the pond,

Just me and the dogs.

Wisdom and Happiness

The wet crescents left by the dogs’ tongues

licking spilled cat kibble from the cabin floor;

the strand of light, finer than spider-spun,

unspooling from the center of my chest

as a 20-pound steelhead slashes downstream

through the celadon waters of the Smith;

the gleam of water on Victoria’s flanks

in that moment of stepping

from the sauna into a wild Pacific storm–

vapor-wreathed shimmer, body gone;

the elegance of an elk track

cut in sandy streamside silt;

red alder bud-break in early March;

venison stew and fresh salmon,

garden corn coming on;

Jason asleep on a school night,