Andrew McNeillie
Dulyn
i.m. Trevor and Ivor, and for John
To fish there you wade in air among
The rocks angling for your balance.
Black water chops ashore and the torrent
Holds you bubble-rapt in its sound-warp
Like a dipper submerged in a rushing pool
Intent on caddis larvae.
If one of the others came by to know
Your luck it could startle you to death.
Ghosts as they are, or not. They haunt here
Like the stories they told of ones that got away.
The steep cwm will catch your cast more
Than ever those wily fish might rise before you
To a hook ripped of its barb on a rock.
I learnt in this place, from the age of ten,
To curse like a man, ‘God damn it to hell,’
To brew tea in a smoke of heather stalks and downfall,
To tie instant bloodknots and a noose
Round the neck of the Bloody Butcher
While the fish moved out of range
As now that world has veered forever
And every finger’s a thumb, my reading glasses
Beaded with rain, and not a fish to be seen.
Page(s) 67
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