Cobalt skies

Stolen poem - picture taken after a long, very cold day of fishing the Gallatin River outside of Bozeman last fall.

A Blessing

by Ken Hada

After three days of hard fishing
we lean against the truck
untying boots, removing waders.

We change in silence still feeling
the rhythm of cold water lapping
thankful for that last shoal of rainbows
to sooth the disappointment
of missing a trophy brown.

We'll take with us the communion
of rod and line and bead-head nymphs
sore shoulders and wrinkled feet.

A good tiredness claims us
from slipping over rocks, pushing rapids –
sunup to sundown – sneaking
toward a target, eyes squinting
casting into winter wind.

We case the rods, load our bags
and start to think about dinner.
None of us wants to leave.
None wants to say goodbye.

Winter shadows touch the river cane.
The cold is coming. We look up
into a cobalt sky, and there,
as if an emissary on assignment,
a Bald Eagle floats overhead
close enough to bless us
then swiftly banks sunward
and is gone.

A gift idea- and a gift

Here is a gift idea...
























...and the rumination that inspired it.

Oh, and while we are on the subject of gifts, we should be thankful for the wisdom of Yoda (Ernie) for this prescient warning:

Hunting poetry . . .

Been a while since we've had a decent setter blog posting, and inspired by Josh's recent post . . . .

Here's an excerpt from "Field Sports," a poem by William Somerville, an English poet who specialized in poems of the chase:

When autumn smiles, all beauteous in decay,
And paints each chequered grove with various hues,
My setter ranges in the new shorn fields,
His nose in air erect; from ridge to ridge,
Panting, he bounds, his quartered ground divides
In equal intervals, nor careless leaves
One inch untried. At length the tainted gale
His nostrils wide inhale, quick joy elates
His beating heart, which, awed by discipline
Severe, he dares not own, but cautious creeps
Low-cowering, step by step; at last attains
His proper distance, there he stops at once,
And points with his instructive nose upon
The trembling prey. On wings of wind and upborne
The floating net unfolded flies; then drops,
And the poor fluttering captives rise in vain.

Don't you just love that? ahhhh.

My setter ranges in the new shorn fields

The poetry of hunting

Here's another poem from Raymond Carver titled "Elk Camp."

Elk Camp

Everyone else sleeping when I step
to the door of our tent. Overhead,
stars brighter than stars ever were
in my life. And farther away.
The November moon driving
a few dark clouds over the valley.
The Olympic Range beyond.

I believed I could smell the snow that was coming.
Our horses feeding inside
the little rope corral we'd thrown up.
From the side of the hill the sound
of spring water. Our spring water.
Wind passing in the tops of the fir trees.
I'd never smelled a forest before that
night, either. Remembered reading how
Henry Hudson and his sailors smelled
the forests of the New World
from miles out at sea. And then the next thought--
I could gladly live the rest of my life
and never pick up another book.
I looked at my hands in the moonlight
and understood there wasn't a man,
woman, or child I could lift a finger
for that night. I turned back and lay
down then in my sleeping bag.
But my eyes wouldn't close.

The next day I found cougar scat
and elk droppings. But though I rode
a horse all over that country,
up and down hills, through clouds
and along old logging roads,
I never saw an elk. Which was
fine by me. Still, I was ready.
Lost to everyone, a rifle strapped
to my shoulder. I think maybe
I could have killed one.
Would have shot at one, anyway.
Aimed just where I'd been told--
behind the shoulder at the heart
and lungs. "They might run,
but they won't run far.
Look at it this way," my friend said.
"How far would you run with a piece
of lead in your heart?" That depends,
my friend. That depends. But that day
I could have pulled the trigger
on anything. Or not.
Nothing mattered anymore
except getting back to camp
before dark. Wonderful
to live this way! Where nothing
mattered more than anything else.
I saw myself through and through.
And I understood something, too,
as my life flew back to me there in the woods.

And then we packed out. Where the first
thing I did was take a hot bath.
And then reach for this book.
Grow cold and unrelenting once more.
Heartless. Every nerve alert.
Ready to kill, or not.

--Raymond Carver
Where Water Comes Together with Other Water (1985)

To all you duckers out there . . .

with love and kisses from Ogden Nash.

The Hunter

The hunter crouches in his blind
'Neath camouflage of every kind
And conjures up a quacking noise
To lend allure to his decoys
This grown-up man, with pluck and luck
is hoping to outwit a duck

Beware at the hunting, young men

Here's a little treat from Bobby Burns, titled "The Bonie Moor-Hen." The song was written in 1787; the print above by Samuel Howitt was published 1799.


The Bonie Moor-Hen

THE HEATHER was blooming, the meadows were mawn,
Our lads gaed a-hunting ae day at the dawn,
O’er moors and o’er mosses and mony a glen,
At length they discover’d a bonie moor-hen.

Chorus.—I rede you, beware at the hunting, young men,
I rede you, beware at the hunting, young men;
Take some on the wing, and some as they spring,
But cannily steal on a bonie moor-hen.

Sweet-brushing the dew from the brown heather bells
Her colours betray’d her on yon mossy fells;
Her plumage outlustr’d the pride o’ the spring
And O! as she wanton’d sae gay on the wing.
I rede you, &c.

Auld Phoebus himself, as he peep’d o’er the hill,
In spite at her plumage he tried his skill;
He levell’d his rays where she bask’d on the brae—
His rays were outshone, and but mark’d where she lay.
I rede you,&c.

They hunted the valley, they hunted the hill,
The best of our lads wi’ the best o’ their skill;
But still as the fairest she sat in their sight,
Then, whirr! she was over, a mile at a flight.
I rede you, &c.·      ·      ·      ·      ·

Another hunting poem by Raymond Carver. Perhaps someday I'll edit an anthology of hunting poems.

Shooting

I wade through wheat up to my belly,
cradling a shotgun in my arms.
Tess is asleep back at the ranch house.
The moon pales. Then loses face completely
as the sun spears up over the mountain.

Why do I pick this moment
to remember my aunt taking me aside that time
and saying, What I am going to tell you now
you will remember every day of your life?
But that's all I can remember.

I've never been able to trust memory. My own
or anyone else's. I'd like to know what on earth
I'm doing here in this strange regalia.
It's my friend's wheat--this much is true.
And right now, his dog is on point.

Tess is opposed to killing for sport,
or any other reason. Yet not long ago she
threatened to kill me. The dog inches forward.
I stop moving. I can't see or hear
my breath any longer.

Step by tiny step, the day advances. Suddenly,
the air explodes with birds.
Tess sleeps through it. When she wakes,
October will be over. Guns and talk
of shooting will be behind us.
--Raymond Carver, All of Us: The Collected Poems


****

This poem of Carver's went through at least four successive drafts and was published after his death.

A New Year's Eve hunting poem

Limits

All that day we banged at geese
from a blind at the top
of the bluff. Busted one flock
after the other, until our gun barrels
grew hot to the touch. Geese
filled the cold, grey air. But we still
didn't kill our limits.
The wind driving our shot
every whichway. Late afternoon,
and we had four. Two shy
of our limits. Thirst drove us
off the bluff and down a dirt road
alongside the river.

To an evil-looking farm
surrounded by dead fields of
barley. Where, almost evening,
a man with patches of skin
gone from his hands let us dip water
from a bucket on his porch.
Then asked if we wanted to see
something -- a Canada goose he kept
alive in a barrel beside
the barn. The barrel covered over
with screen wire, rigged inside
like a little cell. He'd broken
the bird's wing with a long shot,
he said, then chased it down
and stuffed it in the barrel.
He'd had a brainstorm!
He'd use that goose as a live decoy.

In time it turned out to be
the damnedest thing he'd ever seen.
It would bring other geese
right down on your head.
So close you could almost touch them
before you killed them.
This man, he never wanted for geese.
And for this his goose was given
all the corn and barley
it could eat, and a barrel
to live in, and shit in.

I took a good long look and,
unmoving, the goose looked back.
Only its eyes telling me
it was alive. Then we left,
my friend and I. Still
willing to kill anything
that moved, anything that rose
over our sights. I don't
recall if we got anything else
that day. I doubt it.
It was almost dark anyhow.
No matter, now. But for years
and years afterwards, I
didn't forget that goose.
I set it apart from all the others,
living and dead. Came to understand
one can get used to anything,
and become a stranger to nothing.
Saw that betrayal is just another word
for loss, for hunger.

--Raymond Carver, Ultramarine (1986)

Whose dogge this is I think I know . . .

Stopping By Woods On a Grousy Evening

Whose dogge this is I think I know.
His owner lives in Buffalo;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his dogge run to and fro.
My little Kate must think it queer
To hunt without a setter near
Between the woods and marshy brake
The grousiest evening of the year.
She gives her wispy head a shake
To ask if there is some mistake
The only other sound's the beep
Of Sonic collar that does not slake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have grouse and cock to reap,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.