The fishing was pretty good last week. I know because I watched Captain Balloon catch a lot of fish while I watched.
Captain Balloon
I often go fishing
with Captain Balloon.
He takes me to spots that are his.
He tells me to cast
where he knows
there are fish,
and when I don’t catch them,
he does.
Captain Balloon,
a cigar in his mouth,
starts whooping
and calls me downstream
to watch him retrieve
a trout big as his arm
but I sulk in my hole and refuse.
I try to pretend
that Captain Balloon
is not catching a trout when he is.
When I snap off my fly,
Captain Balloon
says if you don’t cast now, I will.
While I fumble
and fiddle, trying to tie
another fly onto my tippet,
Captain Balloon latches
onto a monster
and drags it up flopping before me.
Captain Balloon possesses a fly
that, regretfully, I don’t possess.
It looks like a mucous drenched
hummingbird turd,
but it catches the fish
while my fly does not,
so I ask if perhaps
he might spare one.
When I get home,
I swear that I won’t
go fishing with Captain Balloon
ever again,
but then the phone rings.
Want to go fishing?
Yeah, sure.