Best Bobbers Poems
There's a path I always take
down to the river where the woods
are dressed down open
The light of the sky
doesn't shine in your eyes
but leads the way to redemption
I like to stand there for a moment
on the shortcut created by troubled feet
woven with wilderness bliss
and cigarettes butts
It's a path that never sleeps
I see the same semi-blind vision
of the river every time
I hear baby boat horns blaring in the distance
and floating out of view
I walk to the rhythm of the trees
the faint sound of Wild Thing
playing in the car
I carry a bent black rod
with a tangled neon line
and a mud-covered box of rusty hooks
and flaming red bobbers
I wear my T-Shirt that says Iron City Beer
that's cut off at the belly
or sometimes my other one
that says Just Do It
with shredded denim shorts
that ride my buttocks
After a few seconds of inhaling
and exhaling an indecision
I do what most fishermen do
with only my thoughts to keep me company
I find a clean rock
and cast with desperation
The woods close
Childhood Friends (Boys)
Fishing lines and fishing poles
sinkers, hooks and bobbers.
Maybe someday we will go
when we're not playing cops and robbers.
Cowboy hats and balls and bats
my horse an old broom stick.
Can you see? Come look at me!
I learned a magic trick.
Spit balls shot but I got caught
Tommy points and grins.
You did it too I could tell on you.
I miss my childhood friends.
Make no mistakes we're catching snakes
to play with in the yard.
I didn't cry it ain't no lie
when I got spanked real hard.
Racing trains and playing games
this ain't no place for girls.
Summer sun and carnival fun
we wanna ride the Tilt-a-Whirls.
Our first late night but we're alright
see how the scary movie ends.
Creepy crawlers crept our secrets kept
I miss my childhood friends.
Edwin C Hofert
Silent River Run
Research fun gear, on-line or stocked.
Preparation: mixing, matching, dots.
Please, try not to harm the catches we snare;
Eat less of animal flesh;
And, plant lives matter, too....
Date and location decided -- she may or may not attend.
Checking bait and treble hooks, egg sinkers and split shots;
Swivels, bobbers, beads, jig heads and, perhaps, a friend.
Minnows or night-crawlers -- my mind is set on snell knots.
Catfish unknown seek
Rubenesque waters of the
Silent River Run.....
Other cats spout boilerplate
And form-letters to the drowned.
August 15, 2016
It Takes Four - Poetry Contest
Teaching me how to put on the hook and bait,
He would cast it for me and then we'd wait
With three other kids he would go and help them too,
We would sit and watch for what bobbers do
Up and down the bobber would go,
We'd be so excited and let everyone know
Telling them we had a fish at the end of the line,
Reeling it in would take some time
Dad would want to help, but I'd say no,
This was a chance for all he had taught to show
Finally after what seemed like such a long while,
The fish hits land and I break into a smile
Mom says, "Hold up your fish!", and a picture she snaps,
This memory forever saved in a shutter and flash.
My girl Ellie came from Philly
She loves chili from the deli
Such a Silly Sally
Saw her dilly-dally
For a million hours
Smelling gillyflowers
Under hilly towers.
My pop Billy Banker
Was a willy wanker
He was really bonkers
With his deely-bobbers
He loved jelly
Marie Corelli
His cat Milly
And!
Watching telly
With a lily
On his belly.
I caught a giant bass today
Except I really didn't
So large it was it broke my line
You really should have seen it
But as far as telling stories goes
It's the best outcome of all
Escape'd bass are always large
And landed ones quite small
Yet fishermen are not constrained,
By the evidence of fish,
When telling charming stories,
Of the fish that they did wish
Had landed in their boat or net,
This prize they now have taken
Our confidence in their truthfulness,
Would less easily be shaken
By unbounded ‘stravagance,
Of monsters from the deep,
And lines that snapped, and bobbers lost,
And fish they did not keep.
Yet tales they tell unceasingly,
The products of the outing,
More so than fish it sometimes seems,
These stories they keep spouting.
And larger do these fish thus grow
Upon each sacred telling
And eventually they’ll far outgrow
The wall space in their dwelling
Yet I digress from fish me thinks,
And the one that got away,
But yet I’ve proven mightily,
Their stories’ power to stay!
Once almost a little village
Within the city’s bounds,
Huddled around the fish dock
With its own smells and sounds,
Streets of rows of terraces
All well kept and neat,
Pride shining through
Every worker Street.
Deckies, Filleters, Bobbers
All closely living there,
The Skippers and Mates
Breathing more refined air.
Overalled fish house workers
Mingle with and meet
Segged clogged bobbers
In the early morning street.
Then they pulled down terraces
Replaced with industrial estates
Rehoused to the city’s fringes
Splitting up families and mates.
And the fishing industry died
Trawlers tied up in the dock
And old Hessle Road trembled
Nearly died from the shock.
No more deckies, filleters, bobbers
All the fish houses long gone
As this once vibrant area
Learned to adapt and move on.
The once thronged Hessle Road
Seems near deserted these days
As the population slowly adapts
To the area’s very different ways.
Rayners, the fisherman’s pub,
Struggling to survive,
Has mementos of the fleet
To help keep its memory alive.
In an ironical gesture,
Sadly surveying it all,
There’s a mural of a trawlerman
Painted on a gable end wall.
He had plastic bags wrapped 'round his shoes
He was covered with the evening news
Had a pair of old wool socks on his hands
The bank sign was flashing "5 below
It was freezing rain an' spittin' snow
He was curled up behind some garbage cans
I was afraid that he was dead
I gave him a gentle shake
When he opened up his eyes
I said,"Old man are you ok?"
He said,"I just climbed out of a cottonwood tree
I was runnin' from some honey bees
Drip dryin' in the summer breeze
After jumpin' into Calico creek
I was walkin' down an old dirt road
Past a field of hay that had just been mowed
Man I wish you'd just left me alone
'Cause I was almost home..."
Then he said,"I was just comin' round the barn"
'Bout the time you grabbed my arm
When I heard Momma holler son hurry up
I was close enough for my old nose
To smell fresh cobbler on the stove
And I saw daddy loadin' up the truck
Cane poles on the tailgate
Bobbers blowin' in the wind
Since July of '55
That's as close as I've been to being home
Perusing the tea, what it brings, vitality, refreshing, or tranquility.
tea’s altruistic -
the elixir gives itself
to succor ailments
I warm leaves up when my hands and feet are icy cold. The boil arouses my expectations. The raucous kettle poured over a roomy sachet.
the tea bag’s floating -
my bobbers are on its craft
as the scent surges
My hands rejoice as they gently wrap around the cup and rebound. When the minuet knells, the unfurled dose is tossed and what remains is to be enjoyed in a calm and comfortable setting, ideally with pretty things and perhaps a nibble of treats.
lift from lace doily -
a sip of essential oils
and crumpet or two
What’s better than to sit across from special friends. The setting of a magnolia tea house or with one’s teddy bears.
little ones practice -
imagination infused
with love’s sugar cubes
Perusing the tea, what it brings, essence to our lives.
Ducks line up behind Mommy
swimming all in a perfect row
Kids build sand castles
precariously balanced, just so
Red-and-white bobbers bob up and down
to the rhythm of fishermen's strings
Bronzed bodies gaze upwards, supine
sun-worshiping, midst other things...
Another endless, lazy summer's day
for a privileged nation, whose idle play
While in distant lands, far away
ghastly towers of war and famine sway...
I come from a family of fishermen.
Mitchel 300 open-faced reels
Size 6 hooks, 10 lb monofilament line
Colorful bobbers and spinners.
Dreaming of bigmouth bass
and golden-sided muskie.
We cast over a thousand lakes and streams
I even had a subscription to a fishing magazine.
Now in this lost year of 2020,
The year of the Chinese rat -the mask-
police brutality and uncivil disobedience.
Not to mention the crazies released from prison.
Rioting, looting, and defunding (the peace)
My attention has shifted toward
38 specials-9mm Glocks and A.D.T
I have a subscription for a more serious type of magazine.
Opalescent rainbow bass, slippery catfish large,
green banks of rivers, beyond the rich man's barge.
Guppies gallows, fishmonger agleam,
going fishing, Saturday. Catch me downstream.
Opalescent rainbow bass, slippery catfish large.
bring those bobbers, and peanut butter jars.
Hitherwards we traipse, little boy, while it’s still dark.
fishing with a determined grandpa is not just a lark.
It is four o’clock, time to hit the riverbanks.
Let us coax and coddle those catfish tanks.
They like to hide in a concealed shady spot.
if we don’t hurry, catch a fish, we will not.
Cool breeze Payne’s grey sky
Night lit by a harvest moon
Two red bobbers bounce
By: Robb A. Kopp
There's a feeling of sadness
Mixed with a wistful awe
As we pick our careful way
Across a rubble strewn floor.
An eerie sort of half light,
As though hiding from the day,
Hiding our history until
It's finally thrown away.
This building still stands
Though gutted inside:
I suppose now it represents
A city's lost pride.
Graffitied walls
Fittings smashed
Not much left
Of its proud past.
I can see the lock gates.
Now sealed against the tide,
Imagine an old sidewinder
Waiting patiently inside:
Waiting to land wet fish
That valuable tasty haul
Brought safely on board
From its bulging trawl.
Imagine steel segged clogs
clacking clicking up the road,
Bobbers walking the tunnel
To handball this load.
Seen from a window the old dock
Just a sea of reeds, silted and gone
Hiding a chequered past
As time has moved on.
I sit to reflect for a while
On a broken office chair:
I can feel the past
Flowing through me there.
Such a sense of sadness
Now filling my head
Time to get up and leave,
This building is now dead.
One last walk around outside
See huge cracks in the wall.
How long before the dozers
Finally make the bricks fall.
On the White Fish Authority roof
Children have set a fire
Maybe a symbolic recognition
Of its coming funeral pyre.
The flames gutter and die
As the children run away
And the once proud building
Survives yet another sad day.
This piece of history can be saved
If we don't wait too long
Like so much of our past
Once it's gone it's gone,
Who’ll remember the sidewinders
And their Bell Bottomed Boys
In this place of eerie silence
Once so full of life and noise.
A sparrow hawk stoops
As we walk away
A sort of hopeful end
To a sad and weary day.
I was asked to do a voiceover for an independent Documentary Film Maker, and so had the privelege of entry into prohibited places. After hours of filming over many weeks the project was sadly put on hold with the arrival of Covid 19.
Are there ghosts on Hessle Road
Do the bell bottomed boys
Slide quietly into Rayners
For the pint, the craic, the noise.
Do their pockets still jingle
Until, having spent it all
It's again through the Bullnose
To pursue the ghostly trawl.
Do they wander through estates
Where terraces used to stand
A self contained little village
That bordered on dockland.
Do ghostly clogs clack and echo
As a gang of bobbers meets
To wander to the Fish Dock
Through the old ghostly streets.
Is there still a St Andrews
Where bobbers do their bit
Hand balling a slippery catch
Kit by kit by kit by heavy kit.
Do Big Lil and her Revolutionaries
Stand in lines by the dock
Checking on a vessel's safety
Before it slips through the lock.
Does the Lord Line Building
Once a building of pride
Again survey the scene
From St Andrews Dock side.
As I stand among the remnants
Of a weeded and silted Dock
Looking at what's left of
That once so busy old tidal lock
In my mind I hear rattling chains
As they ready the trawl
To prepare for sea once more
To chase the silvery haul.
I can go take a pint at Rayners
See history lined on the wall
Raise a glass to the Bell Bottomed
Boys who lived and died for the trawl.
3 days between trips, spending more than 300 days a year at sea, famous for their brightly coloured bell bottomed suits, and their ashore celebrations, known as 3 day millionaires, now just a memory in our City.
The Fish Dock now a shopping park, the dock filled in, and haunted by an air of decay and depression, the once proud companies offices sliding daily nearer collapse
Just a small memorial to the lost stands on the Bullnose, which they passed on the way out into the river and onwards to Icelandic fishing grounds, danger and, too many times, death.