The Young Boy and the Cagey Fisherman

Picture an idyllic Foster Pond, with its glass like reflection of pines at the far end of the lake. Picture Vaughn, without a tinge of grey in his newly forming beard and me paddling with my big brother in an aluminum canoe that unwelcomely clanked every time a careless paddle hit its side.   

Oh! to be sure, Vaughn was not a Cagey Fisherman but:  

His scraggily beard and plaid shirt did dress him the fashion.   

And his knowing banter of experience, real or imagined, did pretend him to boast.  

As many casts we did make, time and time from the boat, to catch our quietly querulous foe. 

Until the one cast of mine, the rod did wrench, only to plummet into the perilous depth. 

Without malice, without thought, the young boy launched himself aloft. 

To dive, dive deeply to retrieve the rod. 

With rod in hand, pleased as could be, the young boy surfaced, 

To see, Vaughn with white knuckles gripping the gunwales of the canoe,  

And hear the fading echoes of Vaughn’s battle resounding from the nearby hill. 

Words of wisdom from a Cagey Fisherman, “We could have planned that better.”