Fishers

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Page 24

Fishers

Jesse Hegler

First Presbyterian Church, Dalton, Georgia

FISHERS

At Advent in Washington,

I went to an Irish Pub,

And drank the sad green songs.

From a photograph, the young Yeats

Cast a cold eye down from the corner.

Yeats, you wanted to write for your fisherman.

For years, I hankered after mine.

Idols twisted in my brain

Like gilded leaves in a whirlwind.

But the fisher of people found me

Turning slowly and quickly at once

A branch falling from a tree

Until

I of all people

Was awash in the Sea of Galilee.

I the ridiculer

Prayed at the wall of the temple he knew.

Through the church of the open grave,

I rode a wave of pilgrims.

Maybe I can write him one poem, Yeats,

One line even,

Touched with his passion,

Like the rising of the swollen moon

Through the spires of the Mount of Olives.