The tail's tale [#23 Ann]

The tail's tale

This is how the tale begins. Cold water shimmers down the mountain, sprays and glimmers as fish jump. A flash of glistening scales.

And this is how the tale sometimes ends: sunset along a swift flowing stream, the sizzle of a fillet that makes the day seem ... perfect ... somehow.

Yet in between there are untold stories: the raven on the wing, the dive of an osprey ... fellow hunters like you, casting a fly from a rod, hook seeking the bushes. You try to drop it gently into a dream where supper will be fooled. But who's the fool? In hip waders, you wander through waters, a touch of ice biting through layers ... a nip in the air.

But there ... between a rock and an eddy, in a deep pool lies yet another fool. It bites and pulls but you pull harder. It tires out first. But ... ah ... too small and a protected species. Hook removed, it wags its tail goodbye.

So many tales. So many beginnings and endings. Each chapter a story of its own, a way at the end of a day to tell tales of the one that was caught, taller tales of the one that got away.

How some flip a smile like fins wagging good riddance and slip into the glimmer of yesterday.

© Kåre Enga [168.227] #23 November 15, 2011.

Note: earlier version:

This is how the tale begins. Cold water shimmers down the mountain, sprays and glimmers as fish jump. A flash of glistening scales.

And this is how it sometimes ends: sunset along a swift flowing stream, the sizzle of a fillet that makes the day seem ... perfect somehow.

Yet in-between there are untold stories, the raven on-the-wing, the dive of an osprey ... fellow hunters like you, casting a fly from a rod, hook seeking the bushes, you ... trying to drop it gently into a dream where supper will be fooled. But who's the fool? In hip waders, you wander through waters, a touch of ice biting through layers, a nip in the air.

But there ... between a rock and an eddy, in a deep pool lies yet another fool. It bites and pulls but you pull harder. It tires out first. But ... ah, too small and a protected species. Hook removed, it wags its tail goodbye.

So many tales. So many beginnings and endings. Each chapter a story of its own, a way at the end of a day to tell tales of the one that was caught, taller tales of the one that got away.

How some flip a smile like fins wagging good riddance and slip into the glimmer of yesterday.