The Fish

by Elizabeth Bishop

I caught a tremendous fish
and held him beside the boat
half out of water, with my hook
fast in a corner of his mouth.
He didn't fight.
He hadn't fought at all.
He hung a grunting weight,
battered and venerable
and homely. Here and there
his brown skin hung in strips
like ancient wallpaper,
and its pattern of darker brown
was like wallpaper:
shapes like full-blown roses
stained and lost through age.
He was speckled with barnacles,
fine rosettes of lime,
and infested
with tiny white sea-lice,
and underneath two or three
rags of green weed hung down.
While his gills were breathing in
the terrible oxygen
--the frightening gills,
fresh and crisp with blood,
that can cut so badly--
I thought of the coarse white flesh
packed in like feathers,
the big bones and the little bones,
the dramatic reds and blacks
of his shiny entrails,
and the pink swim-bladder
like a big peony.
I looked into his eyes
which were far larger than mine
but shallower, and yellowed,
the irises backed and packed
with tarnished tinfoil
seen through the lenses
of old scratched isinglass.
They shifted a little,
but not to return my stare.
--It was more like the tipping
of an object toward the light.
I admired his sullen face,
the mechanism of his jaw,
and then I saw
that from his lower lip
--if you could call it a lip--
grim, wet, and weaponlike,
hung five old pieces of fish-line,
or four and a wire leader
with the swivel still attached,
with all their five big hooks
grown firmly in his mouth.
A green line, frayed at the end
where he broke it, two heavier lines,
and a fine black thread
still crimped from the strain and snap
when it broke and he got away.
Like medals with their ribbons
frayed and wavering,
a five-haired beard of wisdom
trailing from his aching jaw.
I stared and stared
and victory filled up
the little rented boat,
from the pool of bilge
where oil had spread a rainbow
around the rusted engine
to the bailer rusted orange,
the sun-cracked thwarts,
the oarlocks on their strings,
the gunnels--until everything
was rainbow, rainbow, rainbow!
And I let the fish go.


(Elizabeth Bishop is one of my favorite poets, and this is one of her most accessible poems. Hope you enjoyed it!)

Speaking Truth to Power

Christ before Pilate . . .

Peter at the Day of the Pentacost . . .

Paul before Agrippa . . .

Martin Luther before the Catholic Church . . .

Galileo before the Inquisition . . .

Joseph Smith in chains at Liberty Jail . . .

Martin Luther King, Jr. on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial . . .

President Reagan in the shadow of the Berlin Wall . . .

The Tank Man's silent protest in Tiananmen Square . . .

These iconic moments are seared into my conscience by the profound courage their protagonists displayed. I get goosebumps just watching these clips or reading the accounts.

These heroes could have been merely ordinary, but a combination of determination and destiny brought them before the heights of power, where, armed only with the courage of their convictions and with their own lives in jeopardy, they spoke the truth. They unmasked evil, denounced injustice, eviscerated ignorance and exposed deceit. They stood, they delivered, and they changed the world.

Entrenched power creates and perpetuates leadership opportunities, and this usually is a bad thing. (See Vladamir Putin, Saddam Hussein . . . or Teddy Kennedy :)

But courageous leaders, speaking truth to power, resonate their message deeply within the collective conscience, and expand their influence through the essential clarity, verity, and hopefulness of their vision. They spark revolutions and topple governments, not through force but through ideas.

The power fades, but the truth endures.

Here's to those heroes, past, present and future.

(And once again . . . GO ROCKIES!!!)

Rocktober

Normally, this is football time in Colorado. But not this year . . .
The Colorado Rockies are on a winning streak unprecedented in the history of baseball, closing out the season by winning thirteen of their last fourteen games, which gave them a chance to earn a berth in the post-season in a winner-take-all tiebreaker game against the San Diego Padres on October 1st.

What ensued was one of the most thrilling games imaginable. The Rockies jumped to an early lead, gave up a grand slam in the third inning, battled back to take the lead in the sixth, then gave up a tying run in the eighth on a miscue from Matt Holliday, their erstwhile All-Star and MVP candidate.

Then the real drama began. The teams were deadlocked after nine innings, and as the game headed into extras, each pitch began to carve thickly through the heavy tension that settled over the infield. The tenth, eleventh, twelfth inning passed. . . each team gave up opportunities with men in scoring position, but no one could deliver the final blow, until in the thirteenth inning the Padres hit a two-run homer.

It was over, we all figured. No way could they have any magic left to conjure an extra-inning, two-run rally.

But the Rockies had different plans.

Matt Holliday strode to the plate, and in one mythical swing, he hit a triple that not only tied the game, but also redeemed his prior fielding error and secured the NL batting crown and RBI title for the season.

He then stood on third base, and a sacrifice fly sent him sprinting for home . . .

A head first slide, a cloud of dust, a bloodied chin . . . and finally a delayed "safe" call from the umpire.

The Rockies had won most improbably, and launched into the playoffs for only the second time in team history.

They quickly dispensed with Philadelphia , and now tomorrow they line up against the Arizona Diamondbacks. Can their winning continue? What's gotten into these guys? How can a mediocre team suddenly transform into a giant killer, a team for the ages? Could they when it all? Why not? If they could make it this far, anything could happen . . .

This is when baseball gets fun. There are few things less interesting to me than early season baseball games. Major League teams play a ridiculous 162 games during throughout the spring, summer and fall. Who cares if they win or lose in June?

But it all pays off in October, when every pitch, every swing carries the weight on an entire season, of every fan's dreams, of a city's self-worth (as the Broncos crumble). And even more so, it's the tension in between the pitches that is addicting.

Every play in a baseball game starts with a lone gunslinger on a hill hurling deadly projectiles towards a solitary hitter armed with a wooden club. Man to man. Weapon against weapon. Willpower against willpower.

Maybe it's baseball's cowboy--and even prehistoric-- undertones that make it so captivating, speaking to some vestigial, pre-civilized inclination in all of us to see our tribe's warriors slay the enemy's.

Or maybe it's just a heck of a game that Abner Doubleday (or whoever) invented that has woven itself into our collective identity, that sometimes flashes brightly before our eyes and thrills us to the core.

Especially in October.

And this year, especially in Rocktober.

Go Rockies!