Tongue in Cheek

As further commemoration of the daring of Christopher Columbus and the honor we bestow on him by having a big retail sales push through a (but only one) weekend-extending Monday in October, I want to share with you another poem, or maybe merely a rhyme, from our Anonymous Poet. The Silent Fishermen Two fishing boats were coasting just off the Belle Isle Strait, Which hardly counts for much, except to note the date; It was Fall, fourteen ninety two, with news from fleet to fleet: An unknown Genoese adventurer had been granted Spanish sheet. Nonplussed were these Icelandic salts who muttered on and on, about how odd To stow no fishing gear on board, yet stock the hold with salt and cod. He guessed of islands in the sea unknown to even modern men, And reckoned distances on a map, with an imag…