One day, a man had a dream that he went fishing in a deep lake. The water was dark, green and beautiful.
He fished alone with an old pole he knew well.
He put on a small lure, plain and simple and ran it deep. In the first pass he took a heavy fish. The fish ran hard under the water, pulling his pole down, then broke the surface with a splash.
He waited for another run, the thrill of the fight, but the fish had given up, and he pulled it to the bank.
It lay in front of him, beautiful and quiet. Very gently took it up and removed the hook from its soft, red mouth.
It was a dark green fish with a perfect red mouth and a perfectly symmetrical pattern of vertical black stripes. It was long, healthy, fresh and so very finely demure. He looked down and thought how beautiful it was.
Then the fish looked up at him and said softly but so very clearly, “We are here.”
And he threw his lure back in the deep pool to fish again.
Then the old man awoke, and thoughts ran in his mind, and rising from his bed, he said to all the world, “Together we might fish like that for people and for their beautiful children, trolling deep, and throwing back in, and in doing so we may catch more beautiful ones as well.”
And then exiting his bedroom, he stopped and paused and said to know one in particular but to everyone in specific, “Come fishing with me.”
Modern Fables and Antifables 