The Engine and the Pool
by DAVID McCORD
MEN coming to the river in the spring
Before the ice had gone, before the sun
Found time or latitude for northern Maine,
Led speculation on that trembly timber
Bridge across the water
Above the salmon pool.
How many Aprils
Solid down to May locked both abutments
With the blue clamp that keystone-ice can shape
To counter structures poised the other way!
Many:
But year to year, as yet no winter,
I mean no roaring spring, had done the damage
Long on the cards that said it would be done.
The bridge still stood — still stands.
A kind of causeway
Led out to it, off from it, safely spanning
The three dried oxbows of the fluvial past
In riding straight as Euclid to its purpose —
A crossing good for grade, exact for angle,
And right to cheat the morning sun that glittered
Largely on the upper pool.
One way the bridge looked off to pleasant prospects.
Distant and wild: the other to the mountain
Round winch the tracks made quick to disappear.
The lean men with brown beards and poles and peaveys,
Who followed the first race of logs and ice
That piled the one like jackstraws on the other,
In disentangling what the sun was melting
Were always glad on rounding bends above
To sight that lonely bridge beside Todd’s logan —
You don’t say salmon pool except on paper-
The last they’d trouble with that spring, that river.
Before the ice had gone, before the sun
Found time or latitude for northern Maine,
Led speculation on that trembly timber
Bridge across the water
Above the salmon pool.
How many Aprils
Solid down to May locked both abutments
With the blue clamp that keystone-ice can shape
To counter structures poised the other way!
Many:
But year to year, as yet no winter,
I mean no roaring spring, had done the damage
Long on the cards that said it would be done.
The bridge still stood — still stands.
A kind of causeway
Led out to it, off from it, safely spanning
The three dried oxbows of the fluvial past
In riding straight as Euclid to its purpose —
A crossing good for grade, exact for angle,
And right to cheat the morning sun that glittered
Largely on the upper pool.
One way the bridge looked off to pleasant prospects.
Distant and wild: the other to the mountain
Round winch the tracks made quick to disappear.
The lean men with brown beards and poles and peaveys,
Who followed the first race of logs and ice
That piled the one like jackstraws on the other,
In disentangling what the sun was melting
Were always glad on rounding bends above
To sight that lonely bridge beside Todd’s logan —
You don’t say salmon pool except on paper-
The last they’d trouble with that spring, that river.
2
Todd’s logan? Logan is a Maine lagoon:
Out West, a fellow who became a berry.
Well, this Todd was a man, a passer-out of Maine,
Who disappeared but wrote his name in water
About the time Thoreau and Joseph Polis,
His Indian guide, were riding rough and smooth
The Mattawamkeag somewhere in the fifties.
Then salmon filled Maine’s rivers, running and spawning
In water choked with nothing worse than logs,
Bateaux, canoes, ice — all in season.
No chemicals, no shavings, bark; no circular
Saws to swirl the amber dust of death.
The green state, clean of stream.
Some wretched history since has touched Todd’s river.
The darkest chapter deals with his lagoon;
Industry above, black water to the sea.
Todd’s was the sweet pool up or down for twenty
Green Maine miles; the years had only shaped it
Better for resting fish and fishing men.
Even the bridge shared in it, cleaving current,
Fencing the water with a latticed shadow.
A few trout, wise old squaretails, came to live there;
Moved in a long succession of long summers
After the great pollution stopped,
And figured large in dreams of anglers prowling
In happy accident those happy banks.
Then one day in the nineteen-thirties
Somebody said salmon casually, almost,
And there they were returned — testing the clearest current,
Fresh-run, home, up in the shelving waters
Where ancestral eggs had hatched pure silver
That ran like silver: quick, alive, and gone.
Out West, a fellow who became a berry.
Well, this Todd was a man, a passer-out of Maine,
Who disappeared but wrote his name in water
About the time Thoreau and Joseph Polis,
His Indian guide, were riding rough and smooth
The Mattawamkeag somewhere in the fifties.
Then salmon filled Maine’s rivers, running and spawning
In water choked with nothing worse than logs,
Bateaux, canoes, ice — all in season.
No chemicals, no shavings, bark; no circular
Saws to swirl the amber dust of death.
The green state, clean of stream.
Some wretched history since has touched Todd’s river.
The darkest chapter deals with his lagoon;
Industry above, black water to the sea.
Todd’s was the sweet pool up or down for twenty
Green Maine miles; the years had only shaped it
Better for resting fish and fishing men.
Even the bridge shared in it, cleaving current,
Fencing the water with a latticed shadow.
A few trout, wise old squaretails, came to live there;
Moved in a long succession of long summers
After the great pollution stopped,
And figured large in dreams of anglers prowling
In happy accident those happy banks.
Then one day in the nineteen-thirties
Somebody said salmon casually, almost,
And there they were returned — testing the clearest current,
Fresh-run, home, up in the shelving waters
Where ancestral eggs had hatched pure silver
That ran like silver: quick, alive, and gone.
3
One morning in a coastal town a doctor,
Haunted by what was hanging in his closet,
Fevered a little by toxemic summer,
Tired from his rounds of measles, coughs, and
Cardiacs, the newborn nameless, suddenly
Cut the umbilical of his stethoscope,
Rummaged in mothball darkness and emerged,
A new man with an old dream headed north.
The sun was hardly on the eastern faces
Of convening mountains when the doctor,
Breasting a growth of fern fronds in his path,
Heard the sweet mumble of that stony water
And saw, like the flag of a just frightened buck, The foaming rapids from the salmon pool, and the old bridge beyond.
A big blue heron leaned away in flight,
His slow wings steady as a sleeper’s pulse.
Haunted by what was hanging in his closet,
Fevered a little by toxemic summer,
Tired from his rounds of measles, coughs, and
Cardiacs, the newborn nameless, suddenly
Cut the umbilical of his stethoscope,
Rummaged in mothball darkness and emerged,
A new man with an old dream headed north.
The sun was hardly on the eastern faces
Of convening mountains when the doctor,
Breasting a growth of fern fronds in his path,
Heard the sweet mumble of that stony water
And saw, like the flag of a just frightened buck, The foaming rapids from the salmon pool, and the old bridge beyond.
A big blue heron leaned away in flight,
His slow wings steady as a sleeper’s pulse.
Busy with rod and ferrules, Silver Grays,
And other dear-named articles of trade,
The doctor paused to loop with his deft fingers
Familiar gut to tapered line— the suture
Happiest of all he knew. Then quietly
He slipped away upstream to where the trail led
Out on a little promontory starred with moss.
There he knelt and, scanning the light low water,
Observed two salmon by the wonted stone,
Twelve yards above the tail. Two gray destroyers,
Submarines: powerful, poised, alerted, and aware.
Just below them, once in the old days, thought the doctor,
A little clinic of us fishing here
Along in May were just a bit astonished
When the distinguished surgeon applied to his
Snell hook — a number six — the juicy vermiform
Appendix he had brought down in a bottle.
It took too, was the funny part.
And other dear-named articles of trade,
The doctor paused to loop with his deft fingers
Familiar gut to tapered line— the suture
Happiest of all he knew. Then quietly
He slipped away upstream to where the trail led
Out on a little promontory starred with moss.
There he knelt and, scanning the light low water,
Observed two salmon by the wonted stone,
Twelve yards above the tail. Two gray destroyers,
Submarines: powerful, poised, alerted, and aware.
Just below them, once in the old days, thought the doctor,
A little clinic of us fishing here
Along in May were just a bit astonished
When the distinguished surgeon applied to his
Snell hook — a number six — the juicy vermiform
Appendix he had brought down in a bottle.
It took too, was the funny part.
4
But now
To other business. Into the shallows just above.
We’ll fish this wet, downstream; swing the fly over.
Over and over, three times. So it went. A rise. . . .
And then the long cast ceased and the doctor smoked,
Watching the water for a hatch of flies.
How still the air was now, with the sun climbing.
The birds gone, one lone teetertail collecting
At water edge each washed-up grub and bug
On each emerging rock up to the bridge.
Listen!
Why, yes, it could be. That’s the rumble
Of a train behind the mountain. So they must
Be using the old railroad still! I thought it
Was abandoned — up for scrap.
Some louder now. . . .
And pretty soon the doctor
Perceived the antiquated engine puffing
To other business. Into the shallows just above.
We’ll fish this wet, downstream; swing the fly over.
Over and over, three times. So it went. A rise. . . .
And then the long cast ceased and the doctor smoked,
Watching the water for a hatch of flies.
How still the air was now, with the sun climbing.
The birds gone, one lone teetertail collecting
At water edge each washed-up grub and bug
On each emerging rock up to the bridge.
Listen!
Why, yes, it could be. That’s the rumble
Of a train behind the mountain. So they must
Be using the old railroad still! I thought it
Was abandoned — up for scrap.
Some louder now. . . .
And pretty soon the doctor
Perceived the antiquated engine puffing
Round the spiral easement of the grade
That led up to the pool.
A hand waved
From the cab. A blue shirt and a red bandanna
Leaned far out, and the hand was lifted. The other
Hand seemed somehow to get hold of
That invisible throttle and whatever,
Grinding, creaking-those were the timbers creaking
And blessed if that queer train, with Mr.
Westinghouse helping a little with a burst of air,
Didn’t come full stop in the bridge’s middle
Three flat cars and one box, caboose
Hanging to landward in a thread of smoke.
Whispers and sighing and subsiding creaks, and
“Say, Doc, what you got?”
“Not yet.” The doctor
(Rightly addressed by chance)
Stood up now — quietly too, as not forgetting
He was a fisherman first. The engineer
Just shook his head. “Too clear,” he said. “ The
Water’s low.”
“I know it.”
“And besides,
You ain’t just where they’re lyin’.
That would be right here.” A canvas glove
Pointed downstream, off left. “Three good ones there.
I’ll just pull off. You try ‘em.”
And he pulled
Across the three dried oxbows of that long ago,
Ground to a second squeaky stop, and waited.
The doctor
Knocked out his ashes, fiddled live long minutes
With a change of fly, and waded in.
The strangest clinic a man ever had
In this beloved art!
“ He’s got a schedule,
I suppose,” the doctor muttered. “I hope the patient lives.
Instruments ready: well, here goes.” His wrist
Flexed backward, forward . . . pause.
So that’s the story.
The fish?
The fish weighed sixteen pounds, four ounces.
That led up to the pool.
A hand waved
From the cab. A blue shirt and a red bandanna
Leaned far out, and the hand was lifted. The other
Hand seemed somehow to get hold of
That invisible throttle and whatever,
Grinding, creaking-those were the timbers creaking
And blessed if that queer train, with Mr.
Westinghouse helping a little with a burst of air,
Didn’t come full stop in the bridge’s middle
Three flat cars and one box, caboose
Hanging to landward in a thread of smoke.
Whispers and sighing and subsiding creaks, and
“Say, Doc, what you got?”
“Not yet.” The doctor
(Rightly addressed by chance)
Stood up now — quietly too, as not forgetting
He was a fisherman first. The engineer
Just shook his head. “Too clear,” he said. “ The
Water’s low.”
“I know it.”
“And besides,
You ain’t just where they’re lyin’.
That would be right here.” A canvas glove
Pointed downstream, off left. “Three good ones there.
I’ll just pull off. You try ‘em.”
And he pulled
Across the three dried oxbows of that long ago,
Ground to a second squeaky stop, and waited.
The doctor
Knocked out his ashes, fiddled live long minutes
With a change of fly, and waded in.
The strangest clinic a man ever had
In this beloved art!
“ He’s got a schedule,
I suppose,” the doctor muttered. “I hope the patient lives.
Instruments ready: well, here goes.” His wrist
Flexed backward, forward . . . pause.
So that’s the story.
The fish?
The fish weighed sixteen pounds, four ounces.