if you're lost without               direction
i will be one of maybe             just a few        
i can be    your  own                compass                  
let me        encompass          you, when
direction       is unknown       my arms
are a                 place to                move,
come                    in enjoy the warmth
for i                           will always face
north                            straight true
                          
when your life is all recessions
and really all  depressions  too
let me be
your
compass
let me come encompass you
your Longitude and Latitude are
all thrown
in a muck
let me get you to a place,
where you wont feel so stuck


               The tropic of cancer
       Is not a place for one to linger
  if you need to             grab my hand
hold on like i'm               your stringer
   when you cant                
       gasp another
           breathe and    
               there   isn't
                   anything
                       you  can do
come, and          let me be your    
compass,                let me come  
  and                        encompass you
   every sigh                  you relieve      
     will help                    find you on
          the map,                 and every
             time you             squeeze
                my hands, will help
                      you to relax
                      

this world is                     full of                     problems, one
thing that im                for sure, so                lets forget all
  the complacent           and replace               them with
    something               more,      wipe           away your
       tears you              wont         need        them where  
          we are          going.             if your    lost ill be
           your paddles                         we can find the
            way together                          and just like
              a little                                   compass ill
              be here                                     forever

The man to my right was more than eight feet away. I was going to have to move closer to him to catch my limit of four trout. I halved the distance between the two of us and noted the sideways glance he shot me. I apologized immediately and asked if I was crowding him.
     “No, you fine,” he replied within a thick Serbian accent.
     “You’re with them?” I asked, pointing to the crowd of people on the bridge some 30 feet upstream from us. I had heard the crowd of eastern Europeans talking earlier, and their accents were unmistakable to me. He nodded and we continued fishing.
     With my new angle I was better able to pick my fish in the water, so that’s what I did. I spied one and tossed my jig toward him. It took five casts but eventually, he took the bait. As I netted it in the swift, ice-cold spring water the man beside me congratulated me on the catch. I thanked him and added it to my stringer. This made three, and I only needed one more.
     “What’s your name?” I asked him.
     “Ivan”.
     “Have you been in the states long?” I asked, after the pause following his short reply seemed to invite more questions.
     “Since ‘96, my family live here. It is good.”
     “You like living here?” I wondered aloud.
     “Yes, the fishing is good. It is like back home in Serbia, or in Germany. We have this fishing there.”
     “You mean trout?”
     “Yes, trout...and some other fish like these, in water like this, but I can’t go home now.” He looked away momentarily. His lips pursed, and his brow furrowed. I pulled my line in, wanting to ask him more and not wanting to be distracted.
     “Were you in the war?”
     “Yes, I was in the Serbian police force.” My heart pounded. “When I was in the Serbian police force, we did what you see on the news. We went into villages and we killed them. We killed them all.”
     I cast my line back into the water, spying another trout. Ivan shrugged and cast his own line. I couldn’t tell what he was using but it looked like cheese of some kind. “I was drafted in Serb police when I was 15. I had no choice. If I refuse, they **** me. I did what I had to do.” I nodded, and ****** my line, missing a fish. “Before the war, I fished. After the war, there were not so many people, so fishing was very good.”
     The air around me was alive. The trees were greener, the water was colder and clearer, the sun was brighter, and the sky was bluer.
     “I’ve been fishing for a long time as well,” I responded. My father used to bring me here as a child. He nodded and continued.
     “After the war, all the fish come back, no one fished during the war, so there were many of them. You just had to be careful of the mines.” He grunted and gazed skyward.
     “The mines?”
     “Yes, during the war they mined the water.”
     I watched trout number four take my jig and I carefully reeled him in. Ivan congratulated me a second time, and I thanked him in return.
“You’re a good fisherman,” he said turning back to his own pursuit of the four-trout limit, as I left the water to clean my catch.