In 2008, I had the pleasure of reading and reviewing Guyanese writer Mark McWatt's award-winning collection of short stories (Suspended Sentences). And today, it pleases me again to share more of his work with you--a poem this time.
The poem is titled "Fishing," and he says it's one of his most recent works with/about pictures he's taken over the past year or so. I enjoyed the poem's promise of a satisfying end to the wrestling that often aptly defines the writing process--creative writing or else--and its reassurance that, once that's over, there will be an inevitable return to the wonder of starting it all over again.
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Boys fishing off Cienfuegos, Cuba
FISHING
Two boys fishing—like me—for a poem,
waiting to play each line till it gets taut,
hoping to hold onto it as it fights
to slip away, burning the hand that wants
to grasp and measure it as it leaps and dives.
Often, as with all good lines of poetry, it cuts
the flesh that tries to tame it, to
tire it, to haul it into the light of human
understanding and watch its colours sparkle
as it fights the shape of the vessel
in which they land it and to which
they will make it yield the meaning
of its capture, the scale of its hope—
the syllabic wonder of its form and breath.
And so with every line: some, of course
must be thrown back—too tired,
too weak, too hauntingly familiar,
too easily wrestled into limp acquiescence…
Yet, by the time the circling beam of the
lighthouse, like the flash of trope and image,
becomes visible, the poem will have taken shape
on the crude palimpsest of the dinghy’s floor
and the poet-fishermen will head for shore…
And when the poem is complete, packaged,
marketed, the fisherman of words is happy
to let go of it and return next day
to the blue sea of wonder, to seek again
the fin-flash of lines of poetry, just
beneath the surface of his longing.
—Mark McWatt
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[Please Note: Image and poem Copyright ©2011 by Mark McWatt. All rights reserved]
