The Lure

This the 110th anniversary of my father's (William Wallace Hunter) birth.  He was a lonely sheepherder poet who married my mother (Bertha O'Donnell) in 1929.  I am their first child.  Both were killed in a car accident in 1971.

So I have chosen this day to end this blog with my 100th post.  I have posted every day since I began it except for Sundays.

I feel this is the best poem I have ever written, and thirty years of writing and publishing since then have produced nothing better.

I plan to begin another blog, but without deadlines.  When it is ready I will make a notice of its title on another post here.

                    The Lure

The thread of my life is waxed,

ready to be wrapped on a hook, decorated

with fur and feathers, then flung in a pond.

The fish below—shiners, bluegills, pout—

will watch me floating, dangling helpless.

They will laugh themselves dizzy asking

what fisherman could be sucker enough

to fall for anything phony as that.

They will take turns swirling up through clear

water, at the last moment turn tail

and veer away.  The man on the wrong end

of the line will see the ripple and twitch

back his pole.  He will curse anxiety and luck,

make another cast.  The fish will laugh again,

releasing bubbles of mirth.

                             This will go on

afternoon after afternoon.  The sun will beat down

on the fisherman.  He will keep casting and missing,

missing and cursing, cursing and—you may wonder

why doesn't he reach down into his tackle box

and try another lure?  But the fish are right:

anyone who would cast me out will never come

up with the idea change is in order.

One day the pond will produce the fish who can match

wits with the fisherman:  a long pike or heavy trout.

The others will scatter in panic, leaving him

to swim alone, under my shadow.  Reflex will turn him,

slowly ascending, opening the dark cave

his jaws make when he holds his breath, gills slack

tongue flat on the floor.  He will feel the hook

tear flesh.  His bones will tighten.

The reel will sing to the fisherman whose hands

will remember what to do.  I will fall

in love with my captor.  His pain will be mine

because he is the only one who ever wanted me.

Together we will rise just as the sun

drops into the kingdom of darkness

where stars refuse to shine.

                                    —Donnell Hunter

Sunstone  June 1986

The Frog in our Basement 1984

Harvest 1989