Fly-Craft

I imagine you beginning

to tie this season’s flies, your

eyes squinting at the splash

of lamplight, the tiny vice

and militant hook, a surgeon’s

deliberate fingers. Already

dreaming of mercy, catch

and release, you are patient

with pliers, miniature

snips and whip finisher,

the instruments arrayed

on a table with medical care,

line slender as an optical

nerve.  Did you test every thread

and feather for weight and wind

resistance? Somewhere brown

trout are sleeping. Rainbows

and brookies drift, resting up

for the lunge at living wings,

the Mayflies’ dart and flitter

you mimic with fine artifice.

Beginning and end, the world

comes down to this –  shadowed

light across water, a regimen

embellished with whim.

In your unflinching grace

I imagine the essential Vermeer,

his passion for precision,

his perfect maker of lace.

Your life comes down to this,

stitch by blessed stitch,

all in practice for the cast

and that single splendid leap

into the light, out of the wily deep.