Spring Fly Fishing

Spring Fishing

Ice shimmered in the trees

As I passed the pickup truck

with a reckless swerve on the 

glistening serpent of Highway S.

my switch to summer rubber was early

 
.
 

Rulland's Coulee
flowed muddy brown.

Undeterred, the packs of pickups coagulated

to mark the young season when

the spring wind batters your hat

and kills the cast at your feet.

After clambering up the bank

on Spring Coulee I sipped a dram of single malt
and watched an osprey hover.  Close by,
the kingfishers darted like jet fighters,

their raucous complaints
echoed through the valley.
 

The roadster's trunk held a
bottle of Bordeaux
for early dinner amid the Ocooch.
 

When the sun went off the stream,

an osprey found his perch.

An otter sitting streamside implored me
with his otter's sense of entitlement
 to give him a fish.

 

 

 Fueled up with breakfast and coffee,
I ventured a mile from my roadster
along the many meanders of Timber Coulee Creek
until barbed wire and decomposing cows
established a limit.
   

Beneath the overhanging branches
I cast and smoked a cigar that burned with
an impossibly long,
fine gray ash.  Its thick white smoke
curled up against the
backdrop of the trout stream.