When I Emerged From Sleep, I Was Fishing With Raymond Carver

 

When I Emerged From Sleep, I Was Fishing With Raymond Carver

Then the bedsheets, the dust on the hardwood,
swirling slowly from the ceiling fan, in eddies.

I tried to remember. We weren't catching anything.
But the water was running and was cool.
The weeds were green, scratchy, and pungent.

He was telling me about Tess.
I don't know Raymond. Or Tess.
Except from their prose and poetry.
Which is to say I know their essences,
without ever having met them.
This is the miracle of the word.

Dream fishing is not so different from actual fishing.
There is a tension between boredom and revelation.
As a kid I fished nearly every day, but now that
I am an adult, life mostly flows by without this pleasure.

Raymond communicates, in that dream way
that does not involve speaking, that every
alcoholic's story is a second chance story.
Or a tenth chance story. Until death or sobriety.

He teaches me this. In the same way
that he has taught me to fly fish, silently,
and by example. As I watch his line

dance over the running water I am reminded
of his short poem, the anecdote from Herodotus,
where the Persian emperor flogs the sea in anger
for halting the passage of his army. The filament
dances in the sun, beautiful, unrealized.
This is the miracle of sight.

His line says ‘Keep what you can keep–
let go of all that is not essential, but–
don't let go of that which you cannot let go.'

Awake now, my feet hit the floor
            and it turns to running water.