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there where the Murchison yawns,
stalls as it faces the teeth of sea,
Phil kept losing his bait to nibblers:

‘let’s moor at that buoy,’ he said,
‘I saw fish jumping there,’ he said:

so we rowed down and set the lines out
but the nibblers kept nibbling:

Nick said we should try closer to the
river mouth where the water was livelier:

and the mining bloke from Telfer wanted
to anchor in the river channel because
‘the fish bloody have to be there’:

but what did a bloody miner know?
we asked:

then Phil had a strike (so he said)
and he reeled in a tiny sliver of a wriggling thing:

‘let it go, Phil,’ we shouted,
and the fish swam free:

and fifteen minutes passed: and twenty:

and we moved upstream to patches of weed:

‘there must be fish hiding here, or feeding,’ Phil said:

but again only the small nibblers:

so we tried the channel,
 we tried the river mouth,
we tried opaque water,
we tried where it was clear and sparkling:

Phil said we should come back at five
‘or tomorrow morning early’:

and we shouted once again,
since the bloke was clearly mad:

and Pete, who had lost half a finger when
he poked it into a machine that
would not work but it did, said
‘let’s just be patient, right?’

‘patience is for bloody losers, mate,’
the Telfer bloke declared,

‘and we will be bloody losers if we
don't start bailing, so move your asses’:

and so we moved our asses and bailed
the dinghy as the clouds plumped,
scowling at our heads:

would there be time before the storm
to find the fish? we wanted fish:
but where were the fish?

somewhere, surely, there were fish:

so we kept on trying:

we tried the sand banks,
we tried near a jetty,
we tried at a rocky elbow of the river
in water shadowed dark green
by a cliff where white birds screamed:

we kept losing our bait to nibblers
wherever we went
and not a fish wanted catching:

was the time wrong, or the tide?
the bait? the temperature of the water?

were the lines too heavy?
the hooks too large?

did the voices frighten,
or the oars disquiet?

did the clouds frown too deeply?

was it just a question of luck?

were fish not meant to be caught?

‘fuckin’ heck,’ the Telfer bloke yelled,
and spat into the river