Some Springing Forth E-16 Springlets...

…consider, as found on www.poetrysoup.com , the following:

1.  “Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.”
2.  “It is admirable for a man to take his son fishing, but there is a special place in heaven for the father who takes his daughter shopping.”
3.  “The gods do not deduct from man’s allotted span the hours spent fishing.”
4.  “All I need to know about life, I learned from fishing.”
5.  “If people concentrated on the really important things in life there’d be a shortage of fishing [rods]."
6.  “Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach him how to fish and he will sit in a boat and drink beer all day.”
7.  And, finally, the following limerick entitled “A Bush Lawyer”:

When Ironbark the turtle dame to Anthony’s lagoon
The hills were hid behind a mist of equinoctial rain,
The ripple of the rivulets was like a cheerful tune
And wild companions waltzed among the grass as tall as grain.

Now, Dan-di-dan the water rat was exquisitely dressed,
For not a seal in Bass’ Straits had half as fine a coat,
And every day he combed and brushed his golden-yellow vest,
A contrast with the white cravat he wore beneath his throat.

And Dan-di-dan the water rat could move with ease and grace,
So Ironbark appeared to him a creature out of place,
With iron-plated overcoat and dirty face.

A crawfish at the point of death then came drifting down the drains;
Said he, “I am scalded to the heart with bathing near the bore.”
The turtle and water rat then disputed his remains,
For crawfish meat all day they’d eat, and then ask for more.

Said Dan-di-dan, “The prize is mine, for I was fishing here
Before you tumbled down the bank and landed on your ear.”
“I wouldn’t care,” the turtle retorted, “if you had fished here a year.”

So Baggy-beak the Pelican was asked to arbitrate;
The scales of justice seemed to hang beneath his noble beak.
First he said, “I’ll take possession of the subject of debate”.
As he stowed the fish inside his pouch and then began to speak:

“The case is far from clear,” he said, “and justices of note…”
[But here he snapped his beak and flapped his piebald overcoat]
“Oh dear,” he said, “that wretched fish has slithered down my throat.”

“But still,” he said, “the point involved requires a full debate;
I’ll have to get the lawyer birds and fix a special day,
And in the interim I rule that costs to date have been paid out of the estate.”
And Baggy-beak the Pelican got up and flew away.

So both the pair who went to law were feeling very small.
Said they, “We might have halved the fish and saved a nasty brawl;
For half a crawfish isn’t much, but it’s far more than none at all.”



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