This found poem is written with the words in the story, “The Bass, The River, and the Shela Mant”, written by W.D. Wetherell.
In this story, the narrator faces an internal conflict about what he wants to do and what his girlfriend, Shela, wanted him to do. There is the imagery of a moon and a fish(bass), these two represent Shela and the narrator’s love for fishing. The moon shining a beam of light onto the fish, showing that this conflict ‘shined light upon’ his internal struggle with his love and passion for it. It also references the line, ‘its beam shone directly at Shela.’ The beam of moonlight in the context of that part of the text, showing everything appealing about Shela, from the view of an infatuated narrator, envisioning her in a sort of spotlight. In the end, the narrator eventually gives up his passion for Shela, a decision that is shown he later regrets. His decision to ‘cut the line’ is a physical representation of him cutting off the bass for Shela. This is an inner conflict about the narrator deciding on whether or not to give up his love of fishing to please the need of his girlfriend.
The poem in case it comes out as hard to see:
All my attention
With the fish
Panic
This is where I would lose it.
The moon was out now,
Low and full,
Its beam shone directly at her,
A tug on my heart,
The strain of the bass,
Steadier now,
Growing weakier,
Another tug on my heart,
Torn apart,
Split in half
I hesitated,
Shela,
In her small, soft dress,
The tug was too much,
I cut the line in half,
A sick nauseous feeling,
I saw the rod unbend,
The night foggier,
All I remember is that she would be going home,
The spell cast over me,
Gone,
The memory of that lost bass,
Haunts me still,
I never made the same mistake again.