A fisher-boy's life - part five

A fisher-boy’s life (part five)
Old Abingdon School is now my home,prefects and masters and neat, bare dormunbending rules, grey granite stone; you’re clever? then sit at front of the form, at the back if you are a dreamer like medreaming of birds eggs and fishing the seaor that wierpool, a Thames tributarywith shiny new reel and split cane rodtwelfth birthday present from grandpa -‘Islip, pay attention!’ My master speaks;(small interest then in Latin and Greek.)Where the pools are bright and deepWhere the grey trout lies asleepUp the river and over the leaThat’s the way for Billy and me (James Hogg, 1770-1835: A Boy’s Song)Where the pool lies, bubbling clearwhere green weed grows down the weirBy the Thames and over the leathat’s the way for Harris and me -(only surnames at Abingdon School -did my fisher friend have a forename?)
Our free time, we go with our tacklefree as the stream from Abingdon’s shackle to snag with bare hook some whispy weed - with tiny mites on which fishes feed -whilst crouched behind the fringing reedthen holding breath await the bite, oh!how those chub would fight and fight! and once a handsome two pound roach I caught; and I can see those fins ceriseand flank, as bright as a sixpenny pieceon green green grass where she lay that day;and I can feel the hunter-gatherer’s joy,a golden moment for a motherless boy.
‘So, to be or not to be, then’, joked Harris‘You could have it stuffed, Islip, you knowor perhaps you might simply let the fish go.’I kissed her, my lips to her slippery nose, and still hear the drone of that long gone Mayand catch the scent of the wild that aroseas I watched my love swim slowly away.
Bryan IslipPart five of  ‘A fisher-boy’s life’ : 1st June 2014