Come on, fish exist!!!

Kudos & thanks to Milton Reynolds & Lulu Miller for enlightening me.

There’s no question,
fish exist!

I know, 
I’ve hooked them,
played them,
caught them,
lost them, 
held them, 
released them.

Hell, 
I’ve eaten
a few, too!

Rich with a nice striped bass caught on the fly on the California Delta.

So, ignore the cladists
and their clades
and their insistence
on fishes' non-existence!

Have of any of them
stepped out of their labs, 
wadered up 
and chased steelhead
on the Trinity or Klamath, 
hooked into one
just fresh back 
from the sea, 
felt them tighten a line
and tear off upstream
like a runaway train?

Have any of those white-coats
stripped a clouser minnow
through a murky slough 
out on the California Delta 
and had a 20-pound striper
hit it and rip it the other way, 
leaving a raw burn from the fly line
deep across the underside 
of their index finger?

Dr. Monty working a dry fly at dusk on the Delta.

Painful proof,
those beautiful water creatures
with fins and scales, 
gills and translucent tails 
exist.

Cladists are fanatics,
rather than simply group
us, animals and plants
by evolutionary similarities, 
they dig more deeply,
searching for evolutionary novelties,
the less apparent similarities
hiding beneath scales and fins,
feathers and skin,
advocating lungfish and cows
belong together, 
along with frogs, birds,
and people! 

They believe
fish don’t exist,
as a category,
that is.

I’ll remember that
the next time 
a non-existent steelhead 
hits my swinging fly,
tightens my line,
and has my 7-wt reel
singing like a violin,
then crying like a baby
and melting down
in my hand.