A Prayer Runs Through It
Brian Phipps
July 1, 2001
After a midweek softball game in early May a few years ago, still dressed in muddy cleats and ballpants torn in the knee from sliding, and feeling slightly delirious with spring fever, I bought my fishing license for the year. That night, I gathered my gear, then sat with a glass of Scotch, a cigar, and my favorite book of poems: Under the Influence of Water by Michael Delp. I nursed the drink and the smoke, staying up late, and read the book straight through, half dreaming of being on the river. The next evening, I would be trout fishing, shaking free of a long Michigan winter that had left me despondent and restless, eager to wade chest-deep into a river, to smell mud and river water and green life burgeoning along the banks and in the trees, hoping to feel that shock down the line when a fish connects, reminding me I was still alive.
I could hardly bear to be at work the next day, even though (or especially because) I would be leaving midafternoon for my favorite river. It wasn't an unusual feeling. Even on good days, I tend to see work as something through which I can't help but strive for meaning, yet usually fail to find it. So I slipped Delp's book from my briefcase, typed up one of the poems, "River Access," and e-mailed it to my friend Rebecca, who worked down the hall.
Driving the back roads
looking for river access,
the full moon just rising
like a white eye over the horizon,
you want to find some way into the
water,
some way to replenish the husk of
yourself.
Turned out Rebecca was having a rough day too. And she really liked the poem, even though she wasn't into fishing. So at intervals throughout the day, until she bailed out early and I headed north, I typed another poem and sent it to her: "Casting toward the Light," ...
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