"Blur" by H. L. Hix

Turns out lots of lines prove blurry I once thought sharp.

Some blur from further away, some from closer in.

Plant/animal, for instance. On which side, and why,

the sessile polyps, corals and sea anemones?

Same problem saying why my self must be internal.

Where do I see those finches glinting at the feeder?

To experience the is-ness of what is,

I’d need to locate the here-ness of what’s here.

Or be located by it. Or share location with it.

There’s a line I want to blur: between my senses

and my self. And another: between my senses

and the world. That anemone looks more like a lily

than an appaloosa. Looks, and acts. I feel that fizz

of finches sparkle on my tongue, the back of my throat.

I don’t say these words until I hear them. My voice

visits. Is visitation. I would choose the role

of visitor over visited, if I got to choose.

Those finches trill and warble in sequences of phrases.

I can tell there’s pattern, but not what the pattern is.

I can say I hear them (I do hear them) in my sleep,

but I can’t say what that means. Their twitters and chirps

start early, before I wake. I can say they chatter all day

(they do), when I’m hearing them and when I’m not,

but I can’t say how I know that. The back of my hand

always feels as if it’s just been lightly touched.

What a Beauty

It's bright and sunny at Yellowwood. For a change.

I will fish the dam at dark, so I start at the south end kicking past the spillway and the new "No Swimming" sign where people still swim.

I drift a fly behind me along the sunlit dam. All is quiet. I hope it wakes up with the coming of darkness.

I've brought something to fortify me along the way. The label inspires me.

There are still a few late bloomers among the shoreline weeds. They inspire me, too. I like to think I'm a late bloomer.

I kick down the west side then fish my way back toward the dam.

I pick up a few bluegill as I go.

Horse flies have been buzzing me on these late summer trips. They often hit the rod for some reason and then fly on. This one knocked himself silly and did a tailspin into the lake. Survival of the fittest.

The moon joins me.

I have on a stimulator tied to imitate the big white mayflies. I used bleached deer hair, and it was old. I get an enthusiastic take from a teen bass, and I think I might be in for some fun. But he near swallowed the fly whole and by the time I can extract it with the hemostats it's ruined. The bass leaves a trail of bleached deer hair as it swims away. Back to the drawing board.

I go to a backup battle tested muddler and catch some bluegill and a crappie along the dam. No bass.

But it's a beautiful summer night and the moon sheds its silver light on the righteous and unrighteous alike. I try a moon photo and forget to turn off the flash and it reveals the mist rising all over the lake.

There. That's better. What a beauty.

Breakfasting On Hazelnuts

Looking Up

It was raining when I got to Yellowwood even though the forecast said it wouldn't.

After a brief wait it quit...

...just long enough to get out on the water. Then some more rain blew in.

I was making the loop again and by the time I was ready to cross over the rain had quit for good.

I was trying a variety of flies, a luxury I can indulge in again with my new eyes. I wasn't having any luck, though.

Then the waxing moon came out from behind the clouds. The moon has been a faithful companion on many of my fishing trips.

It was shining brighter by the time I got to the dam.

The big white mays were hatching again. Last year at this time a whole passel of smallish bass were all over them. I had on a stimulator and last year that would have pulled up a few bass. This year it pulled up a passel of bluegill.

I enjoyed that. But I couldn't help wishing the bass had been doing what I had been doing: looking up.

Hobbit Trees and Other Curiosities

The woods at Yellowwood are taking on a yellow hue. Black-eyed Susans line the road in.

I get to the lake a little earlier than usual and decide to make a full loop. I come up short on a wedding photo shoot. That's a good place to fish, too. I hang back so I don't mess up the photos. There's a pause, so I kick on around. As I pass I call out that I hope I didn't get in any of the shots. The photographer says, "Oh don't worry, I'll just photoshop you out." For a moment I wonder if I exist.

And by the way, I'm pretty sure the groom, an outdoorsy type, is wearing a sheath knife. To his wedding. Seems a little odd. Did they exchange knives in lieu of rings? Or is there some compensation going on?

At the point by the boat docks a bass finally hooks up on the plastic worm.

Things get slow again after that. I have time to admire the beauty around me. A sassafras leaf floats by sending a not-so-subtle message that we're getting late in the season.  

Acorns are thick on the oaks. Deer, squirrels, chipmunks, possums, mice and other rodents, as well as a variety of birds will depend on them to get through the winter ahead.

Hickory nuts are weighing down the shagbark branches, and squirrels are hard at work feasting on them and gathering them in. A steady rain of rind and shell fragments drop into the lake from overleaning trees.

These hickory trees are prone to tent caterpillars. I think of them as Hobbit trees. In Mirkwood the dwarfs were captured by spiders, spun into bundles, and hung on branches until Bilbo could rescue them.

I make it around the loop but the fish are quiet all the way around. There is a pretty good hatch of the big white mayflies going on over by the dam, but few fish are taking advantage of them. I tie on a big light stimulator but am largely ignored.

I begin fishing down the dam but some folks are bank fishing and creating light pollution up by the spillway, so I kick out around them and head for the ramp and home.

Maybe the next time I come more fish will have discovered those big juicy mayflies.

"Epistemology" by Catherine Barnett

Mostly I’d like to feel a little less, know a little more.

Knots are on the top of my list of what I want to know.

Who was it who taught me to burn the end of the cord

to keep it from fraying?

Not the man who called my life a debacle,

a word whose sound I love.

In a debacle things are unleashed.

Roots of words are like knots I think when I read the dictionary.

I read other books, sure. Recently I learned how trees communicate,

the way they send sugar through their roots to the trees that are ailing.

They don’t use words, but they can be said to love.

They might lean in one direction to leave a little extra light for another tree.

And I admire the way they grow right through fences, nothing

stops them, it’s called inosculation: to unite by openings, to connect

or join so as to become or make continuous, from osculare,

to provide with a mouth, from osculum, little mouth.

Sometimes when I’m alone I go outside with my big little mouth

and speak to the trees as if I were a birch among birches.

Hungry Life: Yellowstone River

Whet your appetite.

The Lake Is Wet

Yellowwood. On the drive in I flush a venue of vultures hard at work on a carcass hidden from my view. There are the expected turkey vultures in the bunch but I also discover black vultures. The first time I saw one was in Virginia, but they are extending their territory north.

The lake is wet, by which I mean the road, the ground and the parking area are puddled up from an earlier rainstorm. I can hear the deep guttural sound of thunder off to the north. I'm hoping the storm will continue on its way and let me fish dry.

As I begin to kick out of the inlet I see something I have been seeing the last few trips: a school of two-inch minnows launches themselves out of the water. I seldom see any sign of the predator causing their panic, but this time what I presume to be a bass, moving at high speed, pushes a bow wave right into the weeds. I think he got a good mouthful that time.

I throw some minnowy flies for awhile, but I apparently can't strip as fast as the minnows swim. I'll work on that problem and see if I can't get in the head of those minnow feeders.

I head out. I'm going to fish the south end and the dam. The spillway is gurgling with the fresh runoff as I make my way around the shoreline trailing a heavy white bead head streamer, the last minnowy fly I tried.

The thunder is still booming and it sounds closer. I look around to the west and see dark clouds rushing out of the woods. I'm sure I'm going to get nailed. I batten down the hatches.

It's just the outriders of the storm. The brunt of it slips by to the east and north. It's enough to put the vultures up, though.

I think maybe the rain will miss me, too, but the sprinkles soon turn into a downpour. The lake is wet again.

Now I'm fishing a plastic worm and getting a few pulls. I see something struggling in the water and kick over to see what it is. As I expected, it's a cicada. It's a noble insect, very beautiful. It makes an interesting photographic subject.

This is the Green-winged Cicada, different from the 17-year cicadas we experienced last year.

When I'm finished I attempt to shake it off my thumb but it hangs on tight. So I pluck it off and it lets go with an earsplitting high-pitched buzz. Makes me jump just a little. Maybe it's a scream for help. I put it back in the water anyway. Feed the fish, I always say.

I get back to fishing and hook up with a good fish. He measures out right at 18 inches. I'm pleased.

It rains harder while I look for an even bigger bass. It seems like the perfect time. Instead I find a smaller bass.

The rain quits by the time I get back to the dam for the home stretch.

I work my way slowly all along the dam with the worm, but the catching is over.

The moon peeks out of the clouds for a moment or two, but quickly ducks back in.

Time to go home and dry out.