Skip to main content

A Blind Fisherman

By Stanley Moss

I teach my friend, a fisherman gone blind, to cast
true left, right or center and how far
between lily pads and the fallen cedar.
Darkness is precious, how long will darkness last?
Our bait, worms, have no professors, they live
in darkness, can be taught fear of light.
Cut into threes even sixes they live
separate lives, recoil from light.
He tells me, “I am seldom blind
when I dream, morning is anthracite,
I play blind man’s bluff,
I cannot find myself,
my shoe, the sink,
tell time, but that’s spilled milk and ink,
the lost and found  I cannot find.
I can tell the difference between a mollusk and a whelk,
a grieving liar and a lemon rind.”
Laughing, he says, “I still hope the worm will turn,
pink, lank, and warm, dined
out on apples of good fortune.
Books have a faintly legible smell.
Divorced from the sun, I am a kind
of bachelor henpecked by the night.
Sometimes I use my darkness well—
in the overcast and sunlight of my mind.
I can still wink, sing, my eyes are songs.”
Darkness is precious, how long will darkness last?
He could not fish, he could not walk, he fell
in his own feces. He wept. He died where he fell.
The power of beauty to right all wrongs
is hard for me to sell.

Stanley Moss, “A Blind Fisherman” from God Breaketh Not All Men’s Hearts Alike. Copyright © 2011 by Stanley Moss. Reprinted by permission of Seven Stories Press.

Poet Bio

Image of Stanley Moss

Stanley Moss (1925–2024), a major American poet, published Goddamned Selected Poems with Carcanet in 2024. His many poetry collections fight for the lyrical truth with original weapons. He made the ordinary beautiful and extraordinary.

See More By This Poet

More Poems About Living

A Wyandot Cradle Song

By Bertrand N. O. Walker

Hush thee and sleep, little one, 
     The feathers on thy board sway to and fro; 
The shadows reach far downward in the water 
     The great old owl is waking, day will go. 

Rest thee and fear not, little one, 
     Flitting fireflies come to light you on your way 
To the fair land of dreams, while in the grasses 
     The happy cricket chirps his merry lay. 

Tsa-du-meh watches always o’er her little one, 
     The great owl cannot harm you, slumber on 
’Till the pale light comes shooting from the eastward, 
     And the twitter of the birds says night has gone.

  • Living
  • The Mind

Whose Mouth Do I Speak With

By Suzanne S. Rancourt

I can remember my father bringing home spruce gum.
He worked in the woods and filled his pockets
with golden chunks of pitch.
For his children
he provided this special sacrament
and we’d gather at this feet, around his legs,
bumping his lunchbox, and his empty thermos rattled inside.
Our skin would stick to Daddy's gluey clothing
and we’d smell like Mumma's Pine Sol.
We had no money for store bought gum
but that’s all right.
The spruce gum
was so close to chewing amber
as though in our mouths we held the eyes of Coyote
and how many other children had fathers
that placed on their innocent, anxious tongue
the blood of tree?

  • Nature
  • Living
  • Relationships
Browse Poems About Living