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.

<indent>The Silent Fishermen</indent>

Two fishing boats were coasting <indent>just off the Belle Isle Strait,</indent> Which hardly counts for much, <indent>except to note the date;</indent> It was Fall, fourteen ninety two, <indent>with news from fleet to fleet:</indent> An unknown Genoese adventurer <indent>had been granted Spanish sheet.</indent> Nonplussed were these Icelandic salts <indent>who muttered on and on,</indent> <indent><indent>about how odd</indent></indent> To stow no fishing gear on board, <indent>yet stock the hold</indent> <indent><indent>with salt and cod.</indent></indent>

He guessed of islands in the sea <indent>unknown to even modern men,</indent> And reckoned distances on a map, <indent>with an imaginary pen;</indent> He never garnered treasures <indent>enough to pay his freight,</indent> And left the flagship run aground, <indent>bare wood left over for a crate.</indent> He is remembered now by more <indent>than are other profiteers,</indent> But the simple fishermen <indent><indent>of a new world sea</indent></indent> <indent>coast forever, his silent peers.</indent>

By The Anonymous Poet

So might Christopher Columbus otherwise be remembered, as deserving of at least two The Magic Library Card! featured articles in the Penn-Franklin News, last Monday and this Monday, to honor him more than 500 years after his four, long shopping expeditions for riches. Memories fade. Indeed they do.