Jeremy Nathan Marks’ most recent poem to appear here was “Boom!” (October 2018).
Catch and Release
By Jeremy Nathan Marks
By Jeremy Nathan Marks
On a small lake in Upstate New York
a conference of writers gathered
for their annual convention/retreat
Somewhere between the Adirondacks
and the Finger Lakes
they assembled for food, drink
and the chance to contemplate collectively
problems not being tackled by International
PEN
New York has a catch and release law
for groups of fisherman who number 500
or more
and seeing as there were 750 writers
convening at this conference
and when asked
542 said they intended to enjoy
the Upstate experience
of fishing for Sunfish and Bass
the catch and release law went into effect
From sunup to sunup
for three consecutive days
542 writers dropped their lines
into the water and boated or bucketed
more than 7500 individual fish
The buckets were so they could look
and admire the scales
and oils which reflected
in rainbow array
—at least on the sunfish—
the brilliant but calming northern
New York sunshine
There was something remarkable
about this spectacle
of 542 writers spending their days
and nights
gathered by a lake that in recent years
had suffered so severely from eutrophy
but this year, due to a late cold spell,
was running limpid, pellucid and cool
and half a dozen other adjectives
the writers conjured up in fishy rapture
Due to cuts to the state budget it was not clear
just how many sunfish and bass
were actually returned to the water
since New York is lacking in Fish and Game
officers who can monitor
the countless lakes and ponds left over
from the last Ice Age
A spokesman for the governor said
it is hard to plan for the full effect of glaciation
even though the Fish and Game Commission
is well aware of the sheer number of lakes and ponds
and spring-fed puddles
which our long Upstate winters deposit
on hale and hearty New Yorkers
