The Fisherman

Ian Von Fange

Down forty yards of  slow-sloping hill with his long thin pole

bobbing, curved taut with the line, he finally reaches the lake and sets

his chair and cracks a beer and waits. By midnight, he’ll have caught

a dozen or so catfish decent enough to keep, which he’ll return home with

to bread and fry. Oh how simple a life, craving nothing after a long day of  work

or despair more than waiting, letting the solitude of  a lake at the bottom of  a valley

surround you, disappearing into the waiting, losing yourself  in a silence

broken only by the line’s jerking or the leaping of  carp far-off, 

near the opposing shore. This is forty years ago now, long before I will be born

or even considered, southern Kansas, long stretch of  America’s great valley,

an evening of  waiting that will feel like a century, and he’ll likely walk away

with barely anything to show for it, but the lesson will be in patience, the kind

he’s going to need to love my grandmother through the cancer and the cynicism.

Twenty-five years later, when he’s guiding the hook in my hands through

the thin fishing-wire I’ve attached to my miniature pole, he’ll try to teach me

how to grow solid roots, feel connected enough to the land to call it home. Then, 

finally feeling adult, I’ll raze my fields and sow some seeds elsewhere, for a while, 

before returning and regretting my self-transplantation enough to be thankful 

for a model of  patience and calm, so I can dig my toes into the dirt once again.

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Ian E. W. Von Fange is a poet, actor, and barista living in Kansas City. A graduate of the International Theatre Program at the University of Rochester in Rochster, NY, his work has been featured in Z Publishing's "Emerging Poets of New York" Series, and his poem "Facts About Peacocks" was awarded an Academy of American Poets Prize in 2016.

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