McElligot's Pool

It was a fall-like Florida afternoon.  In the small pond the waves still held their ultramarine chill - they had not yet been baked into the moss green hues of summer.

On the bank, Matt sat in the scratchy St. Augustine grass, armed with the lure sent from his grandpa from the shelves at Bass Pro Shop.   He watched his line and wondered if the weed killers had finally finished off all the fish.

A neighbor from across the shore called to him, leaning against the curved trunk of the palm tree in his yard, a shovel across his shoulder.

"Young man," he called,
You're sort of a fool!
You'll never catch fish
In McElligot's Pool!"

Mat squinted at him in the brightening sun, tucking his knees up under his chin.

“This pool is too small
And you might as well know it
When people have junk
Here’s where they throw it

You might catch a boot or you might catch a can
Or a even a Christmas tree, thrown in by some man

But if you sat fifty years

With your lures and your wishes
You’d grow a long beard before you’d catch fishes"

The bass have all fled
They came down with the flu
With their stripes falling off
And their scales turning blue

So they fled for the East
They schooled up the whole crew"

It's the mid-winter jicker - the weather’s been crazy!

They had to move out - or start pushing daisies"

"Hmm", Matt rubbed his chin as he thought
That's sounds sorta right
I've been fishing for hours without one single bite
And it seems like forever since a fish has been caught

But this might be a pool like I've read of in books
Connected to one of those underground brooks
An underground river that starts here and flows
Right out to Key West - well, who knows?

It might flow along, under the drive

Down past the highway, I-75
Under the cattle, the palmetto in rows
Past Mrs. Umbroso hanging out clothes

This might be a river
Now mightn't it be, connecting McElligot’s pool with the sea
There could be some fish or sea-skimming skator
Skating upstream to hook up with me later

Some very smart fellow, like a guidefish or scout

Might point out the way
And map out the route
So if I wait long enough; if I'm patient and cool
Who knows what I'll catch in McElligot's pool?

I won't be surprised if a dogfish appears!
Complete with collar and long flappy ears
And if it looks just like Molly I won’t be displeased
With her cousins like tarpons and whales in the seas

Oh the fish that I'll see - I know that they're real!

A seahorse, a cowfish, a two-headed eel!

Or the one with the sunburn, the saw, or the drill

The checkerboard belly, he'll be here - he will

Or a fish that's exotic, from far-off Myakki
Weird and mysterious and really just whacky
Like the fall-jumping fish - well it's really a newt

It floats through the air on its own parachute

But the biggest of all

Is something way bigger

And it's some sort of kind of a thing-a-ma-jigger

A thing that's so big, if you know what I mean

That he makes a whale look like a tiny sardine

And that's what Matt found, casting his line

Into the cold and chill waters with a slight hint of brine

He used that old lure his grandpa had sent

And his pole strained and stretched and it bent and it bent

And out popped this fish, and boy, was it cool

It was something right out of McElligot’s pool

Thank you to the master of the trisyllabic meter, Theodor Seuss Geisel.

Credits: Author Dr. Seuss
Country United States
Language English
Publisher Random House
Publication date
1947 (renewed 1974)
Media type Print
Pages 64 pages
ISBN 978-0-394-80083-7