TO CATCH WILD THRUSHES

“Sometimes, I anger myself,” thought the Trapper as he sat alone inside his hide, “angry for occupying the minds of too many people all at once.”

The thoughts of a Trapper are often thus before the thrushes come. He must calculate lines of flight. He must do this in stillness.

The totalitarian soul of the Trapper as he waits for the appearance of thrushes beneath his box-trap. Many thoughts come and go in his mind - not all of them worth seizing, for sure - and even less worth blowing his cover for. But the Trapper can wait. He sickens me, this mind-feeder, yet somehow I wonder if I am not just a thrush beneath his box.

I have seen him. He can wait forever. He can wait as a heron stalks a fish for that subtle thought to pass through the neural stream, and silently, patiently, selects a phrase with which to spear it, whatever.

But this is just a metaphor. The Trapper is not a heron.

The rough textures of his profile are not argument against the refinement of his soul. The soul of the Trapper is an aesthetic wonder, were you able to see it. But as you cannot, it is barely worth the mentioning. It is covfefe.

The thoughts of a Trapper are often thus. But he does not shoot birds with anything but his camera. Then he takes the pictures home, (for now, anyway,) hangs them in his cellar and skins them alive.

Jim Broadband

Juny 4-th, 2017