Barlow’s Diamonds

I watched white powder diamonds sifted out of coffee colored mud puddles

Pork-knockers keep them warm and dry in chapstick skeletons latched to their waistbands

Small, dirty yellow, diamond piles speckle the table top

The weathered Pork-knocker cannot see the refraction of rainbows on the wall behind him as he stares into his collection under the sole light bulb hanging from a wire

His hard worked hand scans the pile as if feeling for heat and as his finger finds and presses down on a stone to have it stick

He raises the small stone towards my stare and places it in my hand

I think to swallow this small rock, but it has no worth for me even though

Its beauty is clear and I now understand why

It is an anomaly of the earth and its rarity defines a unique value

The diamonds brought them here to Barlow Landing

Like the dominoes slammed down on wobbly wood tables other games and trades have followed suit

I was asked to help and for help who knows,

but for the consequence of each price here was

an infection,

silent and incurable,

but diamonds can only cut and shape other diamonds.

by C. Bromden

Intimations of Immortality

Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home.
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind;
In the primal sympathy
Which having been must ever be;
In the soothing thoughts that spring
Out of human suffering;
In the faith that looks through death,
Thanks to the human heart by which we live,
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears."

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Big Horse Creek, JD McGee

I wasn't quite sure how to kick off this blog or what the contents would be, but I thought that one of my favorite poems would be a damn good way to start. As for my audience, (whoever that may be) they may get an idea of where I am coming from and what may be going through my brain. I sat in my village in Burkina Faso and memorized this poem for one or two days, that's how taken I was. This is a poem from the Yale's Angler's Journal vol.VIII Number 2. It's an undergrad journal that I highly recommend, enjoy.


Big Horse Creek by J.D Mcgee

I duckwalk deermud
to jackpine streamside
where beaver broke oak cuts a pool.
In soft light seeping through canopy
caddis scintillate, tree frogs serenade spinners and water skitters in backwash.

Rainbows kiss the calm intermittently, slurp
emergers in cool shadow or swing in seams and rock for nymphs.
Under waiving rhododendrom cloud I hold a trout into half light
to flash, somehow, as stained glass.
Sharp fly-hook bites my hand and I watch ribbons of red blood
diffuse into stream and tea colored bottom as
white noise from Big Horse Creek's throat
hugs the in-between of canyon and there are questions I don't have to ask.