"The Fisher of Poets", a poem by Marci Rich

In memory of Stuart Friebert

I.

The lure of the taut line
taught you not to stop
casting.
            I know nothing
about fishing, but all that
I know about writing poetry
I learned from you:
            To wait for the thing
that shines, that quivers a little,
even, at the end of the line.

II.
At their lived-out lives,
your caught fish are out in the world
where they can’t breathe.
            And yet they do.

III.
You breathed your last
five years ago, and I still want
to tell you how, sometimes,
poetry becomes less

like something simple to me —
like fishing, like waiting,
like baiting the plump dream
            like a worm.

IV.
In the closest I’ve ever come
to dreaming about poetry,
I’m on a ship, at night’s edge.

            You are there.

Looking up, we see
the “new full moon” pass
in front of the “old full moon.”
(I’m quoting you in my dream now.)
One of those moons
            tumbles down.
I catch it.
It is soft, like a cloth
pillow, and a little misshapen.
It is trimmed with stars.
Others on the ship are our friends,
but I don’t know who they are.
            Neither do you.

We see a man sitting cross-
legged on the deck, leaning back
against the ship’s cold, damp
cabin. He is an artist.
He asks me why I’m there.
            He doesn’t ask this of you.

I drop poems at his feet.

He looks a little like Christ to me,
with his sandals and his rough robes.
            He looks a little like you to me,
and I walk toward you,
and I toss you the cloth-covered moon,
            studded with stars.