Walter Easton
poems from
Deep Trout

Dip him in the river who loves water.
William Blake

Deep Trout , the movie
16mm, 43:43 minutes, color, sound, 1981

Deep Trout , the book
The Bombadil Press, Fairhope, Alabama
125 copies set by hand by Ian Robertson
August 1982



This river we dream
forever whole
watershed bloodline
out of the rock and plush
highlands north
where the air hangs up
the weather settles
and the Earth speaks in tongues
passing molecular bits
of atomic gossip
among rootlets quenched and thriving.

We dream this whole river
here at the surface in the light
we splash through the first movement
glittering
a quick jig and fling
taken at once
agreeing
with gravity's inclination
to be revealed
in water.

We dream forever this river
its voice full unbounded
at the spring head
immediate vast harmonies
carol the respiratory songs of glaciers
deserts
the least germ
and the the hallowed dissolve of dinosaurs.

We dream this river whole
cedar swamp and peat bog attending
gorge carving cataract gathering
incessently heaving
winter ice caught in the tilt of Spring
Summer slaked in the chill of Autumn's
full circles returning.




What is now proved was once imagin'd.
William Blake



Was it Vishnu, or just his name,
that sprang full-grown,
from the side of the Sacred Mother,
a white elephant?
Was his living only, ever catching up
a fate precipitated from his name?
I consider such questions.
They revolve in my mind.
I write them on beaten clay tablets
and fling them to the ground.
Over these questions (and a few others)
I am fallen into madness
tottering, tumbling, swinging to and fro,
eyes opened, mouth gaping wide
the sounds of my own name gush out
pouring and flowing about me like water
I am tossed up to lie sprawling on the ground,
mired in a wallow of otic vanity
exhausted, at the far shores of myself
under strange stars
with neither map nor compass.

No bird soars too high,
if he soars with his own wings.
William Blake

DEEP TROUT

PROLOGUE TO ECHO ME

TROUT FLY DEEP TROUT TOO

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