XXXVII

All of the time before you came
is lost in your coming and going.
I have waited for you at
three different stations.

Now there is no need for waiting:
you have never been gone.
It was only necessary to climb the
mountain to recognize this.
Having asked forgiveness,
I cast a fly
to fantastically beautiful brookies;

I watch the spawning cutthroat
lose his color
in the transparent, jade-green water
of Fairy Lake:
floating in a pink cloud
of diffusing blood.

I glimpse frozen-capped peaks through
the pines:
there can be no rest for me.
Burning.
There is no such thing
as waiting.

XXXVIII

That which hangs in suspension:
a motionless fish in still water
looks with two eyes out of the side of his head
and does not see what is before him.

Facing the current,
the water begins to flow about him
and he is not swept away.

He sees those things which pass by
and maintains his position with little effort.

Turning with the current,
he reaches the sea with
no effort at all.

Having reached the sea
he feels no need to swim farther:
the sea contains an abundance of food

XLVIII

As I look out
through fifteen feet of water
schools of minnows
and orange-bellied bluegills
swim past my ears.

Emptiness
is the aquarium I
swim in.

There is a constant roar
caused by the pressure of water
against my temples:

the memory of you.

XLV

Like the bluegill
that swims in frantic circles
when hooked;

like the rabbit
that runs in a wide arc
when pursued by hounds;

thinking to gain freedom,
I too
run in circles.

XLVII

Does the fish
pray
to the fisherman
who lurks
on the bank above?

Does the rabbit
worship
the hunter
that waits
for him to come round?

Do I
long for
the source
of my despair?

XLIV

hold the brookie in my hand.

In the sun
it turns to shiny gold:
blue, orange-circled spots
burst before my eyes.

I look across the clear-running river;
there is no reversing what I have done.

Slowly I become aware
that the chill from the river
has penetrated my rubber waders.

I have an urge to cry.

CCLIX

The fish know.
Currents.
Pressures.
And deep water.
They lay among the rocks,
sunlight on their backs.

Mountain trout.
Speckled browns.

Ferns...
I lay among them
to learn from the fish.

Oxygen Exchange

Which fish passed the weir of night,
breathing in, breathing out,
air in water,
fire in light,
blood aflame in brilliant gill
gulped red dwarfs, yellow lasers,
exhaust a trail of milt,
dotted egg mass
drifting down
charged with multiple functions
a Milky Way of a thousand constellations?

CXLV

When we started up the mountain
you complained that your legs hurt
and sat down.

Now you ask me what I saw
from up there.

LXXIX

They say
do not try to unlock this door
without a teacher.

Who locked the door?

LI

I am the man
who no longer speaks words.

Attribute my silence
to fear
not wisdom.

Do you
know the relationship
of the fisherman
to the world of fishes?

John Ezra Fowler was born in Florence, Missouri in 1938. He learned how to fish from his grandfather and how to cast a fly from his father.

These poems were composed in 1970 near LaConnor, Washington where Mr. Fowler, and his wife Sara and their two sons, Ben and Matt, lived for a while in a cabin overlooking Skagit Bay on the Swinomish Indian Reservation. A fish weir ran diagonally across the inlet just past the little island that lay one-fourth the way across the bay in front.

"Oxygen Exchange" was added to the sequence in 1993.