Let’s Go Fishing

From The San Francisco Call, May 4, 1913.
 By Hazen Conklin.
 

 All day long I sit a-dreaming
 Of a brook, its waters gleaming
 As it splashes, dances, races
 On its way ‘mongst woodsy places;
 Of a troutbrook, pooled and ready
 For the hand that’s quick and steady.
 Though my desk, in hopeless clutter
 Calls me back to bread and butter
 Work seems sordid, unromantic
 Its insistences pedantic
 And I sit a-dreaming, wishing:
 Come on, Tom, let’s go a-fishing!
 
 In my fancy I am wading
 Where the arching trees are shading
 Pools where fondly one surmises
 One can coax those lighting “rises”
 Overhung by rocks, moss-garnished
 Under which, with truth unvarnished
 One can swear the big trout darted
 Just before the trout line parted.
 Say! What is the call of duty
 When compared to speckled beauty!
 I can hear my line a-swishing:
 Come on, Dick, let’s go a-fishing!
 
 Oh! This beastly grind of working!
 Can’t you feel the fever jerking
 At your coat sleeve, coaxing, teasing
 Saying: “Come, we’ll find appeasing
 For the appetite within you,”
 All the while that you continue
 Adding figures, scribbling phrases
 Threading stupid business mazes?
 Rod and reel and flies and hamper
 Right across each page they scamper.
 Be a sport and stop your wishing:
 Come on, Harry, let’s go FISHING!