Snuggle down and cuddle up
For the nights are drawing in.
Listen! Worms are burrowing
Deep down to below the frost line
To the black damp
Sweet damp Kingdom of the earthworm.
Six feet under
In subterranean chambers,
These humble sinkers,
Tunnel to the hum and pulse
Of the seasons.
Dragging and pulling,
Loaming and ploughing
A mosh of decaying debris down
Beneath the overburden,
Into the clag and quiet crush
Of the dark soil.
Worms, the intestines of the earth
In endless toil turn the world
Over, and over, and over.
In the cosy of my blanket
I hug my cup of tea,
And I look out above and beyond me
Up to the autumnal skies.
A twilight of stars
Flung far across the deepening violet,
Twinkle old light.
I ponder the nebula -
Neighbouring planets with their own histories,
And stories of water.
What became of their worms?
Venus worms, Mars worms,
Jupiter and Saturn worms -
What fate awaits the Earth worms?
Our dormant earthworms
Sleeping cold tight,
Deep down, away from the light.
Earthworms coiled spherical
In their protective sheen of dew,
Patiently waiting springs anew.
cosmic constant, sneaks
to be diluted
pinned down with
prison franks
playing footsie
not a long ride
loveless daybeds
abandoned signals
fighting eyes across trafficked lies
earthern worms
bait filled cells in bread
tape worn in xrays of osiris
skipped eventually in tag
enough to walk down
walking home, down
further than, better days
sinkers on a string
blankets of kelp, poisoned
and learned
the baby won't need a pack of smokes
Only a dime a dozen for these broken dreams,
a free wooden nickel with each pack of lies.
A jar of hoodwinks, flimflams, and bumfuzzles,
a bucket of lost hope, and a box of how time flies.
A Brooklyn bridge, a few penniless thoughts,
next to some wasted time and that mirror and smoke.
Some dirt-cheap hooks, lines and sinkers,
a bunch of fake smiles, and a couple pigs in a poke.
Some bamboozles and a few hornswoggles,
a pile of ashes from some bridges I’ve burned.
A sow’s ear, some silver thread and a gold needle,
a silk purse filled with the lessons I never could learn.
Dear ol' dad loved
the way our mom
made fried clams.
It stood to reason
that a deep fat fryer
would be the perfect
Christmas present for her.
He proudly placed it
under the sad, Charlie Brown, tree
he purchased for 3 bucks
two minutes before the lot closed,
on Christmas eve 1955.
The expression
of disappointment
on our mom's face,
evident to me
but masked for
my younger siblings,
made for one of my sadder
Christmas mornings.
Dear ol' dad, as usual,
was half-lit and clueless.
She died way too young.
He eventually used the pot
to melt lead for sinkers.
I never eat fried clams.
there's only one way
straight down is all you control
so use a bobber
line through a swivel
with sinkers and lucks good bait
play out line and wait
tick tick heavy weight
a slow to reel in quick see
that breaks line and leaves
stan sand
I've fallen in love with her...awkwardness.
Her wispy little poem petals.
The petals coming together.
The reds, pinks, speckled with blue infinity.
Flowing against the current.
Against every trend.
She eventually caved in, tumbling over the brink.
Broke apart in a cool black pool.
A mosaic in stained glass pink.
Trapped in a tangle of sinkers and plastic weeds...
Macabre and painfully serene.
Covered in muck, dust, dirt and filth,
The rods were pulled from the shed,
Brought inside, through the kitchen,
And laid all over the bed.
And the tackle box was emptied of hooks and sinkers,
Old lures, old bobs, and line,
Then the esky got emptied of the last camping trip,
Of empty old bottles of wine.
All washed and dried with thick soapy water,
Then packed to wait for the day,
When we’d all get up early and, with our tent and our beds,
We’d simply just drive away.
And the day came along, we all left the house,
Released from the old ball and chain,
We went camping and fishing, up by the river,
In a torrential, cold steady pouring rain.
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
I want a man just like Dad
So to find him let me start by saying
He is one of a kind so it will be hard to find
He worked on construction sites all my life he has a dirty mouth but not around his wife
Dad told six of us girls that men are like turds
They smell, and some are long and skinny and some are short and fat
In life some are sinkers and some are floater
steer clear of those girls
in life go for the double flusher
he is the kind that just when you think he is down and out
you can hear him pop right back in again
Now Dad gave this advice to all of us you see
I know I have been single most all my life looking for a TURD without blow flies
Tricia Bernard 6/19/2015
The Interview
Boxed lures lay: belly-up, forlorn, caste off sinkers,
line-less, relics of peaceful bygone days. In vaudevillian
colors of corny-orange: their hooks rusty, their prongs
dulled in an unalluring huddle; the bait lies unused
their drawers lowered like fathers, they recall summer
days with their flies down fondly. The boxed lures lay
belly-up forlorn, caste offs: boat-less, rod-less reminders
upon rickety tables, these tabled reveries of mist and sun
conjoin in conjugal tension. Soon sold to gen-millennial
to: decorate walls, ghost grandparents, mind-meld the screen
dancers to the much missed external world. Where the
fish-belly white daughters and sons could sun with fathers
disconnected from the umbilical cord of the Protestant
work ethic. Box baited: belly-up, forlorn, these caste off sinkers
line-less amble past the detritus of peaceful bygone days
when seas and lakes and ponds provided food for the soul.
Published in the April 2015 issue of Eunoia Review
Star to let
to a cat lover
and friend of
less perfect dahlias,
to putter-outers of
unwashed milk bottles;
to curtain shifters
and spectacle sinkers,
to all those gods
in Victoria`s long terraces
all waiting for
the flat upstairs.
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
Nine, growing in your garden, tennis balled, nettled feet, under spell heat dressed
in your hills quiet blanket.
Barren block of shadow banquet, seized, drowned, caved mind.
Nine. Weather comes out broad through wooden planks,
attached tear drops rope the sky.
Sticky eyes, stung loose.
Warmed itchy, Prone to gravel raids-
tones brush a song.
Sinkers melt your webs drunk, pruned in day lights amazement.
Creatures from the deep end perform, scribbling along your intentions.
Snakes sit; Capital rainy sleepers.
pecking whistles lime your feet,
A sliding shadow is your mirror, at nine.
A fast in hurry. you
pretend that you
were dead.
The legend survives,
putting the land’s blood
in the grass roots.
The tremors had started
in the blue flame. A lunatic
calls for the moon to explain.
The tides were not coming ?
Watching hopelessly;
the decline of sinkers.
A watershed of humility.
The river has left the
body of water.
Satish Verma
The wind burnt the chill of infant cheek angling for sinkers
unable in the lavender light of dusk to rise, the wind purrs.
A catfish, with finger long whiskers, thrashes in the dusk;
just landed by the hunter, a salt peter pounded writhing husk.
Lost in hunger's lust the fish hunter's fire dies without pain,
hooked by the wind's burn, chilled, the sink holes now blackened, drain.
The wind stills, no longer lithe; it lies, no longer owning, anything;
no longer moaning, not intoning, not even groaning.
Calm now lies angry in the hollow seeking its rebirth,
slipping round and round, it sorrows, wind winding the earth.
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