The Fisherman's Almanac

After a week whose highlights included a bad case of torso flu, a snowstorm and another flurry of mice invading the newsroom, your scrapblog editor sent a couple of poems she'd read this week to Elmer and Mavis that reflected the somewhat unliterary feel of her week: CHOICE OF DISEASES Now that I'm sick & have all this time to contemplate the meaning of the universe, Father said, I understand why I never did it before. Nothing looks good from a prone position. You have to walk around to appreciate things. Once I get better I don't intend to get sick for a while. But if I do I hope I get one of those diseases you can walk around with. -- Hal Sirowitz (and) WHEN SOMEBODY CALLS AFTER TEN P.M. when somebody calls after ten p.m. and you live in wisconsin and you're snug in your bed then all's I can tell you somebody better be missing somebody better had a baby or somebody better be dead --Bruce Dethlefsen Uncle Joe was not terribly impressed with these masterpieces, having already read them on Garrison Keillor's "The Writer's Almanac" when he'd gotten up hours earlier. So he did us one better, his own almanac poem, cast in a Neopostconstructionist Minimalist style with Haiku-Dao overtones: A FISHERMAN'S ALMANAC A robin holds reveille outside my bedroom window. I dress quietly so as not to wake my bride of sixty years. It is not yet daylight and she needs her rest. I turn on the computer in the den. Weatherbug gives me a favorable report. The fish are calling. I click on Pam's family blog: It is Janie's birthday today. I click on Garrison Keillor's "Writer's Almanac." The bottom line reads: "Be well, do good work, keep in touch." To be well, I eat a bowl of oatmeal and walk to the lake. What will the lake give me for a hook and a worm? A sucker? Once pickled, it will make a Norseman's day. A catfish? Second only to lutefisk for my partner, a Happy Dane. A carp? If smoked, it will go well with beer and crackers. A walleye? The thinking man's fish goes to Dorothy. Her late husband once provided her with the best of fish. Bluegills? Anna will enjoy them for a break from Meals on Wheels. So we do the best we can -- but it don't amount to much. We try to keep in touch with the fish -- old fishermen will understand. -- Elmer Sprick