I know Rumi wrote, “The wound is the place where the Light enters you.” but sometimes it’s just a fishhook.

[Sperm Whale] by Archibald Thorburn, 1860–1935 | Public domain in United States, via Wikimedia Commons

I know Rumi wrote, “The wound is the place where the Light enters you.” but sometimes it’s just a fishhook.  I’m chasing spring salmon this week in Oregon from coast to mountains. I visited a library to see Amsterdam Quarterly published a book review of The Other History . . . along with my new eco-poem,“Of Whales and the Hinckley Hunt on Christmas Eve, 1818” when in one Ohio night “nearly 600 men [ . . . ] bagged 21 bears, 17 wolves, 300 deer, and untold numbers of turkeys, foxes, and raccoons.”  I judged this harshly until I thought how my ancestors, the Starbuck clan of Nantucket, Massachusetts, “800 miles east, shipped out to kill sperm whales” for oil lamps and candles.  The difference is that sometimes the whales won as when the Essex, a Nantucket whaler, was sunk by a sperm whale in 1820 off South America, and the escaping crew had to survive by cannibalism.  Scholars note this sinking inspired Melville’s novel Moby Dick.  But I digress . . . Now, back to the river to catch more salmon.