Clear water rushes over jumbled stones.
Moss and fern crowd the water's edge.
Alder and salmonberry leaves stretch
toward buttery patches of five o'clock sun
strewn amid the tangled dead branches
beneath the shaggy trunks of fir and cedar close by the torrent.
Julia balances on a wobbly lump of stone,
leaning out over the swirls of crystal,
straining for just a few more inches, flipping that little barbed tuft of
feathers
toward the riffle downstream from an invisible underwater boulder,
the riffle where the biggest trout in the world is resting,
the riffle that always seems just out of reach.

 
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