Friday, July 10, 2015

Fishingh on the Shoulders of Giants: Dave Pinczkowski and Tim Pearson

Tim Pearson
I spend a lot of fishing time watching other fishers cast.  The best casters amaze me every time.  The switch and spey casters are a phenomenal group of fly rodders.  The best of them seem to defy the laws of physics.  They also have the honor of pushing the boundaries of what is possible.  Some have been real pioneers.  Dave Pinczkowski and Tim Pearson in particular bring to two-handed casting something entirely different.  After you meet them both you realize that they are chasing something more than the fish.  From the vise to the anchor, the take and the release, Dave and Tim are thoughtful about the experience, sometimes bordering on theology and metaphysics.  Never dogmatic about their approach, but mindful that they are a small part of larger elements at play.  
Dave Pinczkowski












This one is for them.




nuthatches mutter soul poetry

(for the sultans of swing)

spend their days at odds with gravity
and with traced invisible wave crests,
cross the reach of the river’s great turn
pondering from their vertical rutted
white-pine bark perches
the mathematical structure of flow

nuthatches mutter soul poetry,
fluttering by an earlobe,
 wing tips brush-stroking the air canvas,
fly by hope messenger, courage friend,
of a fishless day,
of forward stroke, rod arched,
of endless furling of line rolled out,
of mending into the dim light
of up stream mysteries
of eddy and current,
whorl and oneness
of fluid turbulence

nuthatches mutter soul poetry,
in the very last moments
before the drift reaches the point
where lifting the rod doesn’t matter
a world lights up in the seeming of seams
chrome boil beneath broken
sinuous surface ripple
where line heavy with fish perfect
sings the song of swing
where through the river’s muscular press
and the failing light of sunset
where time ceases and truths
greater than what exactly happened
remade the events that could have happened
shaping what will have happened.

nuthatches mutter soul poetry
on their way to the truths behind
a muted eloquence
a flight back across the sweep
of uncertainty and doubt
above the surface tension
just as the river curls over the edge
tumbling, broken, folded, mixed,

a wing beat swirls the mist in the lucid flow of air
and the steady assurance of tight line
harmonic hum, audible above
rushing river voices
in the liquidity of fluid adaptation,
and a transparent and watery flash of certainty.

nuthatches mutter soul poetry
because they can, even though
their metaphors, stanzaic structure, their meter
fade when dusk has squeezed the last hint
orange glow out of the sky
from where all rivers run into
the great inland sea, north
boots have felt the bottom back
across the relentless press
long rods tap their line cadence
along worn trails back to
the world filled with things that
don’t matter.

the nuthatch still mutters soul poetry
harmonizing the river voices
that surge and stem, rush then
coursing their chorus
way into and beyond the growing dark.



Keep a tight line!