Read Write Poem: Word Fishing

The prompt for this week suggested we take words from different poems and use them to compose a poem of our own. I was going to do that but got distracted by the words 'word fishing' and ended up going somewhere else completely.

The stream in this poem is a real place and one I still return to occasionally. It is a place where childhood dreams still live on.

Word Fishing

Today we are going

word fishing

down at the

bottom of the garden,

by a curve in the

stream where the

water slows and

deepens and

where honeysuckle

hangs over the

algal odour of

silt and

mosquito larvae.

The words here are

long and dark

and lithesome.

They hide in dark

corners where

we tempt them

out with things

foul and ripe.

so that they swim

towards us

across pages

worn smooth by

seasons of flood.

The words here are

ancient.

They tell stories

of epic journeys

and the taste of

salt at depth.

They sing of

great migrations and

homecomings and

the comfort that

can be found in

a familiar place.

We fish for all

of these words.

We hold them

as they slide through

our hands leaving

their viscous

traces on skin,

falling into

red plastic buckets

where they turn and

twist into knots.

We fish for

these words but

we do not

consume them.

A word eaten

becomes bitter

and gristled.

Words returned

to the stream

continue to

dance and

journey and

tell their

stories in a

dark pool

in a cool corner

where water runs

slow at the

bottom of the

garden.