This, from my 92 year old Mother, when she found out I had gone fishing while while still fighting the H1N1 flu:

Down to the Rivers Again

With apologies to John Masefield

I must go down to the rivers again,
To the Stilly, the Samish, the Sauk,
Where the current growls to the tangled glen
And the ghosts of steelhead walk.

No matter the doctor shakes his head
And speaks of reason and rest,
For the rivers are high and the sunrise is red
And they race from that sea in the west.

“They who seek steelhead are lunatics all.”
A wise man once wrote it in stone.
But my waders leap when they hear the call
And the river becomes my own.

So I rise from my bed and smear on some Vicks
And hoist up my tackle with gladness.
I leap in my truck and head for the sticks
In this chronic old wintertime madness.

Florence Ekstrand