Trout in the snow
- Paul Schimmel
The angler
is standing in a drift of first snow.
He is wearing: a smile, brown
wool gnome hat, half-mittens,
two jackets, shorts hitched over
long johns, old boots; a fly rod
light-weight in left hand.
From
his right index finger, the trout,
a big jack brown, hangs by long
lower jaw; the mouth gapes
white inside as the snow.
You can
see the trout is no one shade of
colour; yellow, green, brown, mix
in the flank, dappled with flakes
of rust.
The background is ragged,
rocky tors jag a cleared blue sky;
Central Otago high country, some
would want to call, barren.
If
you look carefully, you almost
feel the dead weight of the fish;
the dry cold, curling fingers; wet
cold, rising through boots; you
sense how, if only the camera
were not holding him so very
still, the feet would be dancing.
• Paul Schimmel works as a psychoanalyst. He divides his time between Shag Point and Sydney.
