Temptation

walking the river on the edge
of someone else’s trout boundary
temptation gets the better
so I cross barbed wire
pulled tight by hoist and muscle

ignoring the sign

makes the bending wire hard
complicated by fly rod
the hole widening in a fence line
becomes a wrestling of two egos:

those that build
those that want through

if the bending isn’t done right,
standing too soon...
a hand slips...
a tangled rod tip ...
a rusted point could catch your waders
your skin
with righteous indifference
could make it nasty later
scratch
cut deep
puncture
but the wound
wouldn’t be much
to the thing that drives
the crossing of fence lines

laying on to the pulse of the forbidden
the effort and the risk of it
when someone slips through strands in a fence
then looking back over
where you’ve been
to
what is
that is there

heart throb that
hums when the wind whispers through
the wires
and ripples the surface
of the transparent mysteries
that tempts us

that speaks through it all
below the surface
finning through the lacy eddies
that hug and caress river rock
ambivalent to the trespasser’s boot





With the opener (just around the corner), I hope this greets you well. I pulled this out of an old folder. It was from a time when my enthusiasm for the "quiet sport" would sometimes blunt my ethical governor. Today, I imagine the ghost of my former self beckoning me on from the other side of the wire. We all confront the sign sometime.

I hope you all encounter the tight lines we all dream on...

Keep a tight line,

Steve Therrien