"Borderline" by JYA

Casting a fly into the sun on the water.
Something shifts
on the glimmering edge of vision.
A shoreline emerges, becomes
the way that beckons,

the journey and the destination,

the light that opens,

a looping, lightshot world of its own,

the borderline between worlds

that cannot be parted.

Small trout flash there
gathering up light

rise by rise by rise,

taking the world
on their bright shoulders and,

with the fulcrum of their vibrant life,

turning it round

and round.

"Twilight" by JYA

The lake rises and falls in long cool breaths.
An eagle skims the last glow of sunset,

folds itself into a shadow of pines.
Loons call down the darkness.

A flurry of bats flits out the last light.
Ducks rush overhead with

a sound like tearing velvet.
Stars pour down, and trout

pluck them from
the still surface

one by one.

"Intimations of Mortality" by JYA

An August evening on the lake.

All seems calm, but
everything is hurtling at breakneck speed
through time and space.

Each day dies a little more;
each coming of summer dark presages

the onset of the season of darkness.

The trout know, and rush to intercept

the swirling fragments of life that will

stave off starvation in the dark time.

They fight the hook, struggle frantically

to reenter their element, to obey the instinctive drive

not for freedom
but for time, precious time.

I fish calmly in the middle of it all,

going a thousand miles an hour.

"Fishing By Moonlight" by JYA

Though I am very late,

the lake is waiting for me.

A bright trout comes to the fly,

goes back in the water

taking the light with him.

Then the moon,

brushing out of the pines,

casts its glow on the lake.

I drift, fly drifts

down silver streams of night.

A shining trout pulls on the line,

lets go.

I nod back:

Yes; time to be on my way. 

The moon leads me home.

"Summer Solstice" by JYA

The wind sweeps across the water, strains against the ridge as though to tip the balance

as the earth begins its tilt away from the sun. The lake on which I float shifts with the earth.

Trout stay deep in the slow slip of current.

A dark shape on the water: a cicada struggling to stay in the light.

I find its image in the fly box, cast it out among the waves. It bobs and drifts.

A riffle breaks, bends, comes together again, as a fish rises, but not to the fly.

I lift the fly, give it to the wind again. It drops, dimples the water, bobs and drifts.

The wind persists; its breath is cold. I take out a jacket. The unattended fly slowly follows

the arc of the line as I spin in the wind. With one arm in a sleeve I hear the take,

look up to see the line straightening, lift the rod,

and a trout breaks into the light.

The net gathers it in, and an ancient, timeless circle is formed, linking hunter and prey,

hope and fulfillment. The fish twists in the net, twists off the hook,

 uses the fulcrum of my grip to lever itself free.

And the circle is complete.

The wind steps back, and night slowly fills its place. Darkness settles on the water,

smooths it to an ebony sheen. Fish trace circles on its surface.

I cast out a caddis, and a trout scribbles at the fly and is caught.

I draw it out and the last light runs down its sides.

I trace my own circle and then straighten for shore. Behind me the darkness presses close,

but before me the western sky still casts a glow, silvering the ripples of my passing.

Time is passing, too, with every chime of every frog,

with each tick of a bat’s teeth on my trailing line.

The day sinks out of sight.