DAY OF THE DOGFISH
July 1970
the night of the salmon bake
Tank Richards nearly OD'd
after which the entire youth group
confessed to using dope
and was summarily expelled from the grounds
the older generation left behind
to wrestle with hypocrisy
"Happy Hour" in ruins
but then a successful conference always needs
some real crisis to deal with
as Black Elk says:
"Where the path of difficulty
crosses the easy way, mark a holy place."
seventeen summers later
the incident that would galvanize
the camp community appeared
almost laughable by comparison
it seems some of the seventh grade boys
had cornered and killed a dogfish
at the shallow end of the lagoon
and then chased the girls around
waving the carcass overhead
well — you might have thought
civilization had collapsed then and there
the Dean instantly scheduling
an emergency meeting
to precede the evening's activities
(which as fate would have it
was a memorial service
commemorating the anniversary
of the bombing of Hiroshima)
"All campers will attend!
No one is excused!"
and I as theme speaker was chosen
to try and put the day of the dogfish to rest
to ask out loud
if what started out innocently enough —
a young fisherman
attempting to remove Jaws
(Dogfish are small sharks)
from the swimming area —
turned into a killing frenzy?
one eyewitness said he saw boys with sticks
stabbing and clubbing
till the water ran red
or was it as others would insist
a rush to be humane
to put a mortally wounded creature
out of its misery and pain
an act of kindness?
an act of brutality?
like in the film Rashomon
everyone saw what they wanted to see
as for me
I remembered the birthday boy
with his brand-new pellet gun
and the skunk
that began as a target —
a tin can —
but when hit transformed itself
into a living breathing thing
hurt and suffering
my weapon
not powerful enough for a clean kill
I shot and shot and shot
sickened and horrified
at the kaleidoscope of expression
in the dying animal's eyes
it was the death lesson
that haunts me still
as for the accusation
that using the fish
to tease the girls
showed somehow
that these young men
had little respect for life
prompted me to tell the story
about the time my own kids
were willing to die
trying to save Ol' Strut & Cluck
from the frying pan
my daughter like Pocahontas
throwing herself
across the chopping block
then
even before the severed head
had hit the ground
triumphantly marching
the bloody squirming body around
my god!
it's the Lord of the Flies
I thought
until someone older and wiser
suggested that children
can make the transition
between something living
and something dead
more quickly that adults can
this event — these memories
dredging up the song I sang decades ago
at antiwar demonstrations
a song that concluded
"You can multiply the lemming
Till they rush into the sea.
But what have suicidal rodents
Got to do with you and me.
We might have split the atom
But to worry is absurd.
And yet, my son is in the garden
Trying to kill a bird."
And recalling this I also recalled
that once in a Unitarian church
a frenzy of angry women
demanded that I explain my metaphor
and when they learned that I had given
my son a BB gun for Christmas
they were upon me like barracuda
ripping and tearing
and just when it looked like
I was a goner for sure
a young stranger reached in
and hauled me out with this:
"I was raised a Quaker,'"
he said, "Forbidden even
to have a friend who owned a gun.
And so in my rebellious years
I declared my independence
by joining the Marines.
and oh, how I wish now,
I could have learned about death
from a bird, a skunk or a fish.
You see, the first thing I killed
was human."
and that was the end of that
the camp community
and this too
filing out of the meeting house
and down to the lagoon
where we launched our fleet of toro
floating paper lanterns
each one lit with a candle
to represent the soul of a human being
who perished at Hiroshima
there on the shore we stood
singing hymns
clinging to one another
till time extinguished every light
and in darkness we vanished
leaving the dogfish to move instinctively
through their watery night
RIC MASTEN was born in Carmel, California, in 1929. He has toured extensively over the last thirty years, reading his poetry in well over 400 colleges and universities in North America, Canada, and England. He is a well-known conference theme speaker and is a regular on many television and radio talk shows. He lives with his poet-wood carver wife Billie Barbara in the Big Sur mountains of California. He has 13 books to his credit. (see amazon.com) |
