THAT

Fishers of Men
Donald Mitchell
Suppose you hook a large rainbow trout
from this shore, and you are a catch-and-release
kind of soul, but no matter how carefully
you release that big, living, shaking jewel,
it dies like a promise to yourself, goes
belly up against the rocks and reeds, its poor
heart stopped. Maybe you’re disgusted
with your life already—of course you are—
and since there’s nothing you can do to save it,
your life or the trout, you just sit here
in the quiet desert and wonder. Maybe
you’re Christian and think of Jesus and all
the healing he didn’t do, or all those hungry
souls he didn’t feed with the loaves and, yes,
the fish. Or maybe you weren’t raised that way
and think instead of all the lives this hard
universe seems to waste with or without bad
governments. Out in the lake, you may see
the fins and white crease in the water
where that upturned life is floating away, too far out
now to be retrieved. Maybe you realize
how deep the black basalt goes down. Look,
I’m not mentioning this to depress you further,
or to question your right to joy, but rather
to say that others threading their own needles
have found these desert lakes too; the river otters
have arrived, their sleek, dark fur
sun-dyed and shining, and they cherish
and continue what and where we cannot.
I think that’s the message for you and me:
persist or die, live well or fall short,
we cannot help but feed the multitudes.
98 THAT