### About the Poem

*Billy and Caesar* is a poem about a man trying to catch an elusive fish and the respect he develops for it over the length of his quest. Beyond the story however, the poem is a metaphor for a man's search for God.

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*A Line Running Between*

### Caesar and Billy

Billy takes wide and careful stride 
ending in teetering balance
and rattling oars.

His lantern, set on the dock,
paints yellow highlights 
on the barbs of his hooks.

His wife blows a kiss.
Billy looks up, unlashes his boat
and rows into darkness.

The weathered aluminum hull
glides like a homemaker’s iron 
smoothing black silk

to a spot out beyond 
Preacher’s Point. A weed line 
of hydrilla and coon tail

where moonlight and lillies
play tag in a remnant of wake.
Billy puts up his oars

and lets down the anchor, 
deep, deep, deep 
into subconscious mystery

where a leviathan catfish wallows 
in a depression of algae 
and muck.

Billy knows he is there,
has been watching his shadow
all summer with never a bite. 

He calls the fish Caesar
and tells him the bait he prepared
is too good to pass up.

But Caesar understands hooks
and exhales small pod of bubbles 
that boils to the surface. 

Billy lights a cigar, watches 
the smoke encircle a star.
A transistor radio is playing 

the gospel. Billy tells Caesar 
his joys and his sorrows
then drifts into slumber. 

Caesar thump on his line 
but spits out the bait. Billy jumps up,
he knows that it's Caesar.

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### Background

*Billy and Caesar* is poem that seems to have a mind of its own. It has been on and off my desk for about ten years in various forms of re-writes. I keep trying to direct it and tell it what to do, but the poem is always rebelling and taking me in different directions. Strangely I really don't mind; I can be patient and will wait to see just what it is the poem wants to teach me. 


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### Writing and art are my own.