According to recent CBC story, Quebec's mosquito population is currently three times it's normal size and exceedingly hungry because of our cool spring thus far.
This unfortunate situation coincides with my annual spring fishing trip, which starts tomorrow morning at 6 a.m.
I write this to inform you that I won't be blogging for the next few days. If you don't hear anything for a week, you might possibly assume that I ended up as the main course of a black fly feast, but I hope to return triumphantly with a cooler full of trout. Last year will be hard to beat, when I caught a 5.5 lb speckled (I swear it's not photoshopped ;-)
In the meantime, I give you a recent poem, composed in happier times (i.e., before the black fly and mosquito larvae hatched).
Winter Wren
Perhaps jealous of the sound—a rivulet trickling
down to wash stones and fallen branches—
the winter wren sings its spring digs,
a tangled rising-and-falling in the brush.
I stop and listen, feeling every moment
the trill must soon stop—surely this
small brown creature cannot go on so,
drowning out the stream; it must be all lungs.
It does end, of course, and the sublime eternal
duet of water and earth emerges in the ensuing
quiet, seeming to pick up where the bird trails off,
dipping up and down over moss and twig.
The wren again inhales damp May air;
it cannot sing forever, though it will die trying.
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