Poetry and Tea at the Fishhouse

MaryJude at the fishhouse

Brother Paul Jasmer has had a fishhouse on Lake Sagatagan at Saint John’s Abbey and University since the mid-1980s. This is the second one, light enough to get on and off the lake and heavy enough not to blow around at night.

There’s never been a fish caught in this fishhouse. In fact, there’s no hole in the floor for putting an auger through and making a hole in the ice. As Brother Paul says, he’s a bit of a snob, and having caught fish at Lake of the Woods in Northern Minnesota, he wouldn’t waste his time on the Sag.

This fishhouse is where Brother Paul invites people to come and read poetry and drink tea. He invited the Queen of England, and a member of her staff wrote a lovely reply with the queen’s regrets. Garrison Keillor was supposed to come, but he didn’t make it in the end. But poets have made it out, and lovers of poetry who bring poems to read.

Brother Paul lays out an elaborate tea. The leaves are packaged especially for him by Upton Tea (he says he’s snobby about the tea as well). He boils the water on a small woodstove and warms the pot, then boils the water again and times the steeping with a pocket watch that, he tells us, is not gold, but was a gift from his parents.

Brother Paul Jasmer

There are candles in holders on small plates. There are china cups and saucers and Delft plates for the food. There are toothpicks for harpooning orange slices, and nuts and cookies. There is milk and sugar, or you can drink your tea continental style.

My friend Maryjude went with me and she brought along three marvelous poems she wrote. I read two of my recent short fiction pieces. Brother Paul had brought along a small icon of the three angels from Genesis. He hung it up as part of the unpacking of the tea supplies. He read a poem by D.H. Lawrence about this Biblical story. It also involved ice and wind and a knocking, and when he read it, there was ice and wind against the walls and he knocked on the wall at the appropriate time.

Tea for Three

He also read two poems by Phebe Hanson about being Lutheran in Sacred Heart, Minnesota, a town we drove through last summer on our way to Sleepy Eye.  The book was called Sacred Hearts.

It’s been a mild winter, but there was a sudden little flurry of a storm this afternoon. It was warm inside the fishhouse, though, and we feasted on cookies and poetry.