fishers

spring fling

fish dream

I am on a motorboat gliding along an inland waterway, traveling north with a residential development on the east and a swamp like the Everglades to the west. I admire the beauty of the Everglades but have mixed feelings about the residential development, partly desiring the scenic location, partly resenting the destruction of the habitat. The boat glides along the waterway silently, swiftly, the water surface smooth and I examine the embankments extending into the Everglades in preparation for further development. I imagine a future where the entire area is housing and the Everglades is destroyed.

I am walking along the top of an embankment along the edge of the Everglades. There is a small pond next to the embankment. My mother is walking parallel to me at the edge of the pond, fishing. She hooks a fish but it gets away. We continue walking a short distance and come to another pond. Here my mother hooks a large fish that I can see in the water. The fish opens its mouth and holds it open to let the hook go, but the hook is attached to a smaller fish that swims into the big fish's mouth so that the little fish catches itself in the big fish's mouth and my mother catches the big fish.

The fish is in the kitchen on the cutting block. I see the knife press against the base of the head, ready to cut it off. I think I am holding the knife. Just then the fish is transformed into a man who gets himself into the corner, sitting on an upside-down bucket, facing out, barely conscious, colored gray-blue. I see his neck is enclosed in a metal band that has a crease in it from the knife. I am stunned by this transformation. I think this must be a Hollywood stuntman. I become self conscious and think I am the man. I wake up.

distant flock