The stillness of the water seems a problem, though in truth it isn’t.
On the shoreline where I fish, the pond has risen with the rains and submerged the bases of the loblolly pines rooted closest to its brown water. Those pines, spires from the water’s surface, line the eastern shore and face the denser forest of oak and maple trees which ring both the the western and southern sides. High grasses conceal the water’s edge over there, at both the west and south. Light may pass through the oak and maple foliage only with the permission of certain seasons, certain hours.
But it falls free over the the expanse of the pond. The dabbling ducks land by the same route but in comic imitation—flapping and quacking and swiveling as they careen from sky to water, like they might always knock one another off-course and crash bill-first. There are over a dozen ducks, and they land with grace at the lowest point of their arc from somewhere else.
The herons, unseen in their high nests in the pond-side trees until they unfold themselves, do not clown this way. From the spear-like beak along the regal neck to the yoke-like wings, they are silent composure in flight, even when they cry their prehistoric, croaking cry. They wade the low waters along the shore in the same precision.
I prefer observing these herons to competing with them, when I try to fish this pond for small-mouth bass. This eastern shore is an uneven place, in slope and shade. If I fish in the evening, I hear the rubbed calls of frogs and rasping cicadas. The frogs somehow call from every every stone, every log, and every tree at once. Gleaning the blind of a frog from from his song is easier than sighting the small-mouth bass from this unfortunate eastern shore. The fish do break the water, of course, but always and only the water far from my cast.
Box turtles also break the water, though only with their snouts and with embarrassment, as if they don’t like to be seen breathing the air. The crows sweeping between the maples will, after all, jeer down at them just as they jeer down at us all. To the south before the pond’s body bends from sight, resolute fenceposts stand in line, submerged to their collars. A double-breasted cormorant often sits atop the middle-most post. She looks small and low, like a duck, when she waits from the water. But on her middle-most perch, the bird’s coal body curls large into its thin hooked beak like a blade.
The stillness of the water seems a problem. But what is it, truly?
I’m not yet a fisherman, just as I’m not yet wholly observant.
The two are joined. You can fish as little as I do and still understand that fishing from the bank of a quiet, murky pond is a way to be present in the outdoor expanse, to offer attention to one place which endlessly and generously rewards it.
Once, I used to disparage fishing for being boring, uneventful, and slow. I was correct in the foremost and in the latter, and both now seem to me unalloyed goods. Fishing is slow, for it moves at the pace of the bass. It is boring, for it bores through the physical acts of the rod and stance and bait and reel and wait into the thought of the body, the observance of the pond.
Since fishing is primarily an aspiration to me, I hook very little and watch what I can. At some uneasy number of casts, I walk south or north along the shoreline and aim my baited hook at new spaces on the pond, at a small oval plane like every other oval plane surrounding it—though this next plane certainly has the bass fated to give his lip to my lure. I cast once more, and I wonder whether this waiting sketches also the patience of writing, and I weigh fishing as a literary metaphor, and I feel the line go taut, and I reel without panicking, and I heave a slimed oak branch free from the murk.
But the literary metaphor is not drowned, though it is not yet caught.
The wait of the writer and the fisherman feels thankless, especially if he is unnoticed or sunburnt. Neither has the assurance of Christ that he will be a fisher of men with effect upon immortal souls, though the fisherman alone will certainly be able to eat his catch. Each one is cut most keenly by indifference. Both must prepare diligently for nothing at all.
Each is mildly encouraged and heartbroken over a far break in the surface, known only as receding ripples // my story “The Hanoverians” will receive a one-line “Longlisted” mention in the future Redbud Coppice Prize anthology //
There are endless oval planes of fated fish in the pond, fishermen must believe. There are endless pages for fêted readers, writers must decide.
When the fish bite at last, and they continue to bite, the fisherman feels he must be enjoying a thundering summer deluge // my essay appeared, glistening and green, in Front Porch Republic // my poem “True Believer” appeared in Reformed Journal // the journal’s poetry editor interviewed me for her podcast // my first-ever commissioned novel review appeared in Ad Fontes //
My fishing rod bends and creaks weakly, joyfully. If I’d had a net over the side of my skiff (and if I’d had a skiff), it would so nearly break with the inexplicable, gifted bounty of these sudden fish. In writing, as in the pond from its eastern shore, rewards are given in crunching abundance.
But there still exist larger fish.
Even a novice like me knows that axiom, from even a small pond like this one. And when I know there are larger fish, there can only be only brevity in my satisfaction. A byline goes by too lightly. A small-mouth bass removed from the hook and laid in the cooler which is then closed and set behind the heel—out of sight—is a small-mouth bass that hardly exists, to the fisherman.
There is an untouched plane somewhere in the pond where, some weeks since, he saw a speckled caudal fin the size of a dinner plate, and he casts for it. The fin had broken the water with a rudely audible splash, never mind the daintiness of ripples. The hook lands imprecisely for the first fifty casts. The writer writes from hope for his every word and must renew this fount by each of his revisions, though the revisions stream eternally around his wrists. The fisherman’s foul hook lands imprecisely for the next fifty casts.
Still, they each continue, and the repetition before the pond is progress //
I trust, 194 days later, that the repetition before the pond is progress //
Repetition upon the pond and against the page is progress. Isn’t it?
In truth, the catch cannot be the ultimate ends of the fisherman nor the writer.
The opposite certainly feels the case. They each set themselves, the very marrow of their thoughts, aside for the mornings, hours, and lives needed to receive what they might never catch. Only what they do receive can legitimize what they have done, what they will do again. And when they hold their catch at last, their gifted reward, the symbol of their livelihood enlivened, the fisherman and the writer pause over the eleven-inch length because they know the pond holds two-footers somewhere they haven’t yet cast.
“The tug is the drug,” I’ve heard it said. But the pond ought to be the contented pleasure. Its presence is the fisherman’s only guarantee, as the place of the page is the writer’s. If I may meld Eeyore and Beckett to mope with lowered, eerie-eyed stare in diabolical intelligence: shouldn’t we settle into contentment with the only surface-level certainty we will certainly and forever encounter, to go on?
But to merely go on is a lame and incomplete cast. This pond from the eastern shore is a wonderland when I do not move from my uneven ground. The mallards won’t yet draw close to me as they swim contentedly. Mosquitoes haven’t yet arrived by the cloud. A silent frog has spawned nearby, green and half-submerged in the water but reaching up a pine root. When a bass fins through the water by the southern shore and then darts from the tell-tale ripples, I do not yet notice. For the heron is coiled tight so that it can stalk the shallows with its beak mere inches from the water’s face.
But to mere go on is a lame and incomplete phrase. This page has been a wonderland when I edge down my uneven line breaks so nearly like enjambments. Words reveal themselves in once-hidden, now-unfurling genealogies. Each new generation is somehow a surprise. There will be bylines, I pray.
I pray also—first, kind Lord—that the observant waiting may become the foremost pleasure. It needs to be. The stillness seems a problem, though it is a joy.
Thanks for being here, y’all. Thank you also for reading my four-gill experimentation in simple author announcements, because I just can’t lead with lists.
Those two excerpts from my novel are the bits of ribs from unwieldy, unclothed bodies unsuitable for full readings, but they are imminent (!!), if glacial. If you’d like to know more, just ask nicely.
And, if I can skirt undermining my prayer for the contented wait: as I observe what some of y’all are building through your newsletter-publications, I am interested in contributing fiction and poetry. Perhaps I’ve been waiting for new literary ponds without knowing it. Again, if you’d like to know more, just ask nicely.
Lovely reflection, Kevin. And I don’t just mean off the pond. 🙌🏻
“Words reveal themselves in once-hidden, now-unfurling genealogies. Each new generation is somehow a surprise.” Kevin, there are so many lines and paragraphs in here that I love. The structure and thematic intertwining was affective as well. Bravo.