three fishy things

mr ronnie agnew
***
red scottish bushy
beard wet with
busch beer foam
rolling blood
bait on brass
fish hooks
with black thread
on the white
rocks of
winganon bridge
singing about
the speckled channel
cat and content
with a blue ice
chest of tolerance
for being with me

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There was this man
who had the tips of his
fingers disfigured on the
ends of them
they were strange balls
of scar tissue with the most
mishapen brown specs of
finger nail growth
They worked good for him
when handling his fishing pole
and he was more than
proficient at catching
catfish
below winganon bridge
one evening my dad
told me on our swivering
back road drive home
from the lake
to ramona that the man
had been tortued by means
of having bamboo splinters
shoved up under his fingernails
I figured that the war
was still going on for him
but now
battling those
spiny barbed fish
had taken the place of
the VC and their punji sticks

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bait shop traffic
***
he has got one lung
but enough nightcrawlers
and minnows to keep the towns
poles baited three times over
on a hill across from the cemetery
seperated by only a deep valley
nevermind that the swarms of mosquitos have reportedly carried
small children as far away as
ochelata before discarding their
bloodless bodies
the talk is that the speckled
channel cat have never bitten better

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