Poetry Corner
Yet fish there be,
That neither hook nor line,
Nor snare, nor net
nor engine can make thine.

-John Bunyan "Pilgrim's Progress(1678)



But yield who will to their separation,
My object in living is to unite
My avocation and my vocation
As my two eyes make one in sight.
Only where love and need are one,
And the work is play for mortal stakes,
Is the deed ever really done
For Heaven and the future's sakes.

-Robert Frost from "Two Tramps in Mud Time"



If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too:
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream---and not make dreams your master;
If you can think---and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same:.
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build'em up with worn-out tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings,
And never breathe a word about your loss:
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings---nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much:
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And---which is more---you'll be a Man, my son!

-Rudyard Kipling



Oh, give me the grace to catch a fish so big that even I,
When talking of it afterwards may have no need to lie.    

- Anon.



...there is great pleasure in being on the sea,
in the unknown wild suddenness of a great fish;
in his life and death which he lives for you in an
hour while your strength is harnessed to his;
and there is satisfaction in conquering this thing
which rules the sea it lives in.  

-Ernest Hemingway "On the Blue Water" (1935)


Down along the river, past the swimming hole,
You can find your piece of mind with just a fishing pole.
And you can walk the river, for miles and miles on end,
And never stop believing in that dream around the bend.

-Robert Earl Keen - from Bigger Piece of Sky



Drinkin’ Water

When a feller once comes to a pond or a tank,
It is better to ride out a ways from the bank.
Fer the water is clearer out there as a rule,
And besides it is deep and a little more cool.
And out toward deep water, you notice somehow,
You miss a whole lot of that flavor of cow.
You can dip up a drink with the brim of yore hat,
And water makes purty good drinkin’ at that.
You mebby spill some down the front of yore shirt,
But any old waddy knows that doesn’t hurt.
There may be some bugs and a couple insecks
But it all goes the same down a cow puncher’s neck.
I know there is plenty of folks would explain
Why such water had ort to be filtered or strained.
Sech people as that never suffered from thirst,
Or they’d think of it later and drink it down first.

From Classic Rhymes by Bruce Kiskaddon, Cowboy Miner
Productions, 1998   



Early to bed, Early to rise,
Fish all day, & make up lies.

-Unknown
-