Fisherman On The Garavogue Poem by Jimmy O'Connell

He stands, blue baseball cap and chest waders,
knee high in dun green water; with flick
of a wrist he pays out the line, drawing
it in, flicking again in rhythmic swoops
of green line, arcing in a slow motion

dance with the late evening sun. Two swans
and their five fluff-grey cygnets glide towards
the weir, turn and return, at home in their
domain, eyeing both fisher and fish as
they break surface rising to the sedge.

Do you catch many, at all? ‘Sure, isn’t
that the game of it. If you don’t cast
you don’t catch’. Do you keep all of them?
‘I return them to the river; but keep
a salmon - if I manage to catch one’.