The Golden Moment
By Neil M. Travis, Montana
The Master Painter sweeps His brush across the western horizon
splashing a mixture of mauve and pink across the clouds turning
a blasé mix of soft grays into a riot of color. The blazing orb
of the setting sun, fiery red fading to orange as it settles
behind the cumulus clouds of a building thunder storm
bubbling up from the heat of the day.
Swallows dip low over the meadows gathering one last meal before
the rapidly gathering darkness drives them to their roosts. A
loose flock of blackbirds' rolls across the landscape before
settling noisily in the cattails in the marsh, and a great blue
heron glides in on outstretched wings to his nighttime perch in
a dead cottonwood.
An angler sits on the bank, his fly rod lying in the grass beside
him. The coolness of the evening is a sweet respite from the heat
of the day, and the distant flickering of lightning is a promise
of refreshing rain before another day dawns. The soft glow from
the light of the setting sun colors the water surface with a
myriad of hues as a child's kaleidoscope slowly mixing and
changing. The peaks of the tallest mountains gather the last
rays of the setting sun and blush reddish before fading
to gray. In the shallows small trout play at a few
fluttering caddis that have appeared for one final dance in the
gathering darkness.
Out of the depths a brown trout slashes into the smaller trout
scattering them like autumn leaves before the north wind. The
angler rises slowly and picks up his fly rod. In the golden
glow of the dwindling twilight he slips his fly from the keeper
and begins to cast. ~ Neil M. Travis, Montana/Arizona
From A Journal Archives
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