"Monet" by Howard Nemerov

"Blue Water Lilies" by Claude Monet, 1916-1919

Unable to get into the Monet show,

Too many people there, too many cars,

We spent the Sunday morning at Bowl Pond

A mile from the Museum, where no one was,

And walked an hour or so around the rim

Beside five acres of flowering waterlilies

Lifting three feet above their floating pads

Huge yellow flowers heavy on bending stems

In various phases of array and disarray

Of Petals packed, unfolded, opening to show

The meaty orange centers that become,

When the ruined flags fall away, green shower heads

Spilling their wealth of seed at summer’s end

Into the filthy water among small fish

Mud-colored and duck moving explorative

Through jungle pathways opened among the fronds

Upon whose surface water drops behave

Like mercury, collecting in heavy silver coins

Instead of bubbles; some few redwinged blackbirds

Whistling above all this once in a while,

The silence else unbroken all about.

"Monet" by Howard Nemerov from The Selected Poems of Howard Nemerov. © Swallow Press, 2003.

Trout Lake Report: Serendipity

Sometimes it all comes together.

You tied up some more damsel dries, this time with non-sink wings.

You get to the lake at late afternoon. It's hot and calm.

As you're getting ready to launch the tube you see a single rise twenty feet away in the shallows around some submerged willows. The ring just keeps on going, a sign that it might have been a large body displacing that water.

You tie on a new damsel dry and push off. You strip out line and drop the fly right where you had seen the rise. There hasn't been another since that first one.

You let the fly rest for a beat or two. Then give it some slight movement. It's delicately sucked under. No nose or head, just a dimple in the water and the fly is gone.

You come up on a heavy fish. You kick out away from the willows and play him in the sunlit shallows, a flash of yellow describing wide arcs around you.

He resists to the end, but you finally get him in the net.

You admire him, revive him, and release him.

You're a little in awe of how your two paths converged on this moment. It couldn't have been more perfectly arranged. Once again you are the beneficiary of serendipity.

You consider kicking back in and going home, leaving the perfection intact.

But you don't. You never do. Life goes on; the long shoreline beckons.

Serendipity is waiting for you.

Youth Sports Post: Soccer Tournament

I usually spend the longest day of the year on the lake, but this year I was in Pasco, Washington for a soccer tournament. I've mentioned before that my son Isaiah is playing this summer for the FC Spokane U-17 team. This is club soccer, a step up from high school sports. This was Isaiah's first chance to play with them in a tournament, and it was our first chance to see him play with them. So it was two nights and three games away from home.

We learned that five of their regular players couldn't be at the tournament, which explained the fact that they lost all three games. But the coach explained that it was OK, that the main reason for playing was to get ready for the next tournament, which is more important somehow.

So it was hard work for Isaiah and the team. Isaiah was discouraged the first day, but by the end of the tournament he was feeling good about the improvement he had made.

As usual, we thought he played great.

Trout Lake Report: Turned On

You go back to the channel and the south end. Things were slow here the last time--which means things could turn on at any moment.

It's another beautiful, hot June day.

You get there early enough to try matching the damsel hatch. During the heat of the day fish key on the blue morsels.

You've tied up some flies that are more imitative than the damselator. You kick out of the access into the channel and a cloud of damsels. There are some fish working right there, so that's where you begin.

They like your imitation. Looks like someone threw the switch and turned the lake on.

You move down the channel into the south end.

You're targeting a couple of rainbows. You can tell they're rainbows because sometimes they come clean out of the water to get at the damsels. There's a rise up close to the bank and you put the fly in there and let it sit. There's a take--and what do you know? A nice brown.

You get one of the rainbows, too.

You're happy with the new damsel fly, but you need to figure out how to improve its floatability. You've already got some ideas.

It's time to switch to a muddler and work the long shoreline. You've tied up a new fly for the occasion. You kick over and start in John's Cove.

You get into the pleasurable rhythm of cast and strip, cast and strip, and not too far along you drop the fly into a little recess in the willows, and a hungry brown explodes on it.

And that's just the beginning. The lake stays turned on. The fish are turned on, too.

And, by the end of it, you're a little turned on yourself.