The sun was rising for the third time since he had put to sea when the fish started to circle.
He could not see by the slant of the line that the fish was circling. It was too early for that. He just felt a faint slackening of the pressure of the line and he commenced to pull on it gently with his right hand. It tightened, as always, but just when he reached the point where it would break, line began to come in. He slipped his shoulders and head from under the line and began to pull in line steadily and gently. He used both of his hands in a swinging motion and tried to do the pulling as much as he could with his body and his legs. His old legs and shoulders pivoted with the swinging of the pulling.
"It is a very big circle," he said. "But he is circling."
Then the line would not come in any more and he held it until he saw the drops jumping from it in the sun. Then it started out and the old man knelt down and let it go grudgingly back into the dark water.
"He is making the far part of his circle now," he said. I must hold all I can, he thought. The strain will shorten his circle each time. Perhaps in an hour I will see him. Now I must convince him and then I must kill him.
When I read this passage, even though the reader is supposed to be on Santiago's side, I can't help rooting for the fish. Any creature that has survived long enough to be bigger than a boat deserves to live out the rest of its days eating, swimming, and mating without threat. In some ways, Santiago killing the fish is akin to killing the last wooly mammoth for its hair or tusks. It's the extinction of wonder.
Poets are in the wonder business. The poems I love--the ones that leave me breathless and stunned--are the ones that tap into this wonder. Robert Frost and his bending birches. Emily Dickinson and her feathered hope. Gwendolyn Brooks and her pool players at the Golden Shovel. These poets somehow bottle moments where the veil is pulled away from our limited eyes, and we are able to see the beautiful ugly of the universe.
I think that's why the idea of Santiago killing that 18-foot marlin bothers me so much. I know that the point of the novella is this struggle of man versus nature. I learned that in high school. However, I know that Hemingway doesn't see beauty in the same way poets do. It's all about human struggle for Hemingway. That's where he finds wonder and astonishment.
Me? I've never been much into fishing or hunting or trapping. I am not opposed to these activities, having lived in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan for the majority of my life. My father, brothers, and sisters treated opening day of deer season like a religious celebration. I get my adrenaline rushes a little more organically. For instance, driving into work one morning recently, I saw a huge wild turkey strutting on the side of the highway. I slowed down because I wasn't sure if the bird would saunter into oncoming traffic. As I slowly drove past, I could see its whole body shiver and inflate, as if it was getting ready to charge my car in anger or consternation. It was an amazing sight.
Turkeys aren't necessarily beautiful creatures. In fact, I would probably say they are homely birds, looking more like fat buzzards. But that turkey was stopping early morning traffic like a runway model during Fashion Week.
So, my lines are not for dropping into the sea from a boat. My feet don't carry me to deer or duck blinds. I hunt with my pen and journal. I'll leave the man versus nature battle to Santiago and Hemingway. They are better equipped. A poem never stopped a charging elephant or hungry shark.
Saint Marty simply prefers the white chicken beside the red wheelbarrow.
And a Lenten poem . . .
by: Martin Achatz
I saw a murder of crows, black as Good Friday, in a stand of sugar maple, their cries a riot of thanksgiving in the gray air. Beneath them, a wrack of rabbits, too young to flee, mewled and bled, torn and ravaged by a boar sounder. I heard the pig screams in the woods, full of spring starvation, the way I feel when the sugar in my body makes my brain move like a sleuth of bears, all lumber and crash. In this time between February and April, Ash Wednesday and Easter, the world vacillates. Snow, heavy as a gam of whales, one day. Warmth and wind, an ostentation of peacock plume, the next. This morning, I woke to sleet, ice, crèche-of-penguin weather. This afternoon, I walk to my office, taste pollen, nectar, a charm of hummingbirds, a flicker of spring. I know, one day soon, the tomb of winter will open, sun will flood the world. A rabble of butterflies. A murmuration of starlings. An ascension, exaltation of larks.
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