Rainbows and Dreams

Today it rained and all was cleansed.  Little gemlet of water jettisoned from the sky, igniteing the air with sparks of transcendence before shattering on the pavement.  Their fleeting individually ended as they gathered in depressions in the pavement, their attraction to each other like north pole to south or man to women.  Where they went as the sun broke between parting clouds is a cycle not just for this spinning ball of mass, but all others like it.  What mystery lies in the unseen though it's explanation seems so simple like the wizard behind the curtain informing on all yet making us feel so small.  Sitting outside Starbucks I wondered on what life would arise from these muddy depressions.  Would it be some parking lot fish or some great creature of the unknown or maybe a gang of mosquitos arising and roaring towards some abundance of flesh like some plane speeding in bound for hedonistic pleasures.  The rain had purpose though and I found it in the river I expected to fish.  It gave my fishy friends a safe yet somewhat turbid home.  Today was a day to remember!!!  Though trout were scarce and suckers plenty, not my preference by any means, I could imagine someone overlooking the river with surprise.  Five fish in ten minutes, they exclaimed.  What has this man done.  Despite the cars careening over the bridge, i was alone with the river, one I long to lay by on sunny spring days with love by my side as the reckless worlds hurry melts in the invisible.  I imagine laying on my belly, face to the ground, getting lost in the minute where blades of grass grow to towering pines and anthills becomes mountains and ants their makers.  Each cluster of grass becomes gigantic if you look just so.  As I stand and that small world falls away, sand is imbeded in the hollow of my cheek.  I brush it away briskly feeling it's particulate roughness fall from divots in my jowels.  Finally to fish.  I was prepared, my flies tied in tandem on my line, my indicator at ready, since at home.  I struck out for new water, intrigued by a barely there path leading downhill.  As I ducked into the trees and stumbled through the duff, hope buoyed my soul through a four season river.  Everything was right.
My first cast rewarded my hope with a fish, a sucker albeit, but the rainbow painted trout I took from beneath wrinkled water more than made up for its underslung mouth.  Rainbow trout iridesce with brilliance, hence their name.  The way they struggle for life before coming to hand speaks volumes of their will which seaps through their smooth skin into me.  It is a summer rainshower making way for the sun, leaving behind little but the memory of dampness yet readying one fully for a short sleeve day.  Each fish proves a point; that the years of study have been worth it like a building of a crescendo to only mellow to the chord of quiet content.  Each word, each paragraph, each day on the river has led to this point and in that moment, fish in hand, there is no other act I can think of that fits me better.  They are perfect in their own way, these fish.  The curvature of their body, so nonlinear yet efficient and sensible.  There fins, water wings allowing them to appear and disappear without any human awareness of them leaving, floating like some alien in nonlinear flow.  Their vision binocular and made for high pressure as they test all, inhaling stick, fly, and insect with curiosity and hunger.  There slick skin allowing them to float through the turbid water with little work at all.  They are made for their home.  And me stumbling awkward, casting imperfectly on this imperfect river tending towards the automatic like the salivating expectation of a slow cooking meal.  In that moment something purely human was found. Today was perfect because of where I was; on my river casting and hoping to hook a rainbow and take it's memory home to hide in a dark corner only to be revisited when dreams of a river call to me.