Swollen River

A poem and reflection from 'Early Music'

Swollen River
from ‘Early Music’

The quiet minute,
when sun goes low
after heat of day,
we searchers strike
out on the banks to
tickle, tease and lure
streamline spirits,
who grace the river beds.

Our quest endeavours
to come eye to eye
with the gasping animal,
sunset still glowing
on its skin, then release it
to murky flooded waters
again, and again.

I know a man
who sits by rivers,
waiting for the plash
and telltale ripples.
Who gazes upon himself
with such patience, that
he does not need to tie
a single knot or disturb
the water’s surface, for he
is forever fishing.

As his eye drifts the current,
the salmon summoned rises.
Taking, loud and strong
his finely feathered intention.

And as the heavy fish
wiggles down to stillness,
nosing the oncoming murk,
a fiery auburn spot appears
like a solar flare erupting,
from the silver of its belly.

---

Fishing is an elemental sport, which favours experts and novices in equal measure. A sport of great skill and intuition, as well as a mystic pursuit of surprise.

As a teenager I would follow my friends to local rivers and lakes around county Limerick, stopping at known fields with compost piles to collect juicy worms for our hooks. The intrepid and exhilarating days of coarse fishing are frozen gloriously in my mind. Later I graduated to fly fishing and I still have a deep love for the sport and the meditative action it inspires.

I’ve lost my mettle around fishing for some years now. The cruelty and folly of it has overtaken my poetic need to carry out the actual, attempted, catching of a fish. But maybe some day I’ll arrive by the river banks of the Shannon river once again with a hookless mayfly…

So it is with this poem, ‘Swollen River’, which I dedicate to a master, and mystical, fisherman from Castleconnell, county Limerick. I have been lucky enough to accompany several times his local evening time fishing jaunts. When a person so easy with their virtuosity ‘brings you along’ to what they do best, it’s impossible to not feel a novice. He let me use his fly rod when we visited the River Fergus, in county Clare. He told me it was made in Norway. I handed him my, what I had thought was a light, mid range fly rod. but experiencing this Norwegian instrument was like playing a perfectly tuned violin. My own axe has never felt the same since…

‘The quiet minute’, referred to in the opening line, is an homage to an extraordinary part of Limerick city. Limerick sits atop the the tidal limit of the Shannon River. The tidal limit is the last point upstream that a river is affected by the earths tidal cycle.
Limerick is around 80 kilometres from the Atlantic coast and the Shannon river is the largest river in Ireland, or England, for that matter. The supreme power of the tide is visible at the Curragower falls at all times. At lowest tide one can see the rocks on the riverbed and in past times people would cross at that point on foot. Famously, the local farmers would take goats across when the tide was at its lowest. One way traffic from the Shannon river trundling shallowly over their feet.

As the tide begins to return, a stark line of white water rapids become visible across the river. The sea begins to build a wall with the mighty river. It rises and rises several metres until it becomes a proud torrent. As the tide reaches its zenith the river forgives everything and the water becomes like glass, calm, as if nothing had ever happened. This is called ‘the quiet minute’ among the locals in Limerick. Acknowledging the fleeting peace accord between the Shannon river and the Atlantic Ocean…

The ending of this poem is an homage to the Irish mythological tale of ‘The Salmon of Knowledge’. In Irish mythology, the Salmon of Knowledge lives in the River Boyne, specifically in a deep pool near magical hazel trees. The salmon gained all the world's knowledge by eating nuts from these trees once they fall into the water. It is said that every time a salmon ate one of the hazelnuts that fell from the tree of wisdom that a spot would appear on its skin…

May this poem be your invitation to acknowledge the power of your own intention. May it be a moment to practice the merciful self patience every human being struggles with. Let it be, also, the invitation to return to a dear pastime that you have left behind from your youth or younger years. Even if you must to return to the river bank with a hookless fly, or to simply watch others indulging in what you once found deeply healing.

---

Swollen River
from ‘Early Music’

The quiet minute,
when sun goes low
after heat of day,
we searchers strike
out on the banks to
tickle, tease and lure
streamline spirits,
who grace the river beds.

Our quest endeavours
to come eye to eye
with the gasping animal,
sunset still glowing
on its skin, then release it
to murky flooded waters
again, and again.

I know a man
who sits by rivers,
waiting for the plash
and telltale ripples.
Who gazes upon himself
with such patience, that
he does not need to tie
a single knot or disturb
the water’s surface, for he
is forever fishing.

As his eye drifts the current,
the salmon summoned rises.
Taking, loud and strong
his finely feathered intention.

And as the heavy fish
wiggles down to stillness,
nosing the oncoming murk,
a fiery auburn spot appears
like a solar flare erupting,
from the silver of its belly.