By a Hair, On a Feather and a Thread

COWETA PROSE & POETRY

Written by GERALD M. HOMMINGA

Gerald M. Homminga is a watercolor artist living in Newnan. He is a member of the Newnan-Coweta Artist Association and Georgia Watercolor Society and has written poetry throughout his lifetime.

It had been a long season.
None of it with the mayfly, caddis, or stone.
Just a long season of illness and weariness.
Two, companions holding on to hope and faith. By a hair…

As he entered the stream, the rhythm of the flow seemed to be a different cadence.
Tempos came where there were none before.

The “song” was not familiar. The orchestra’s pit was repositioned, trees lay where clear ripples once flowed.

He stood in early morning light finding all reference to his past and this place a fog of mystery.
Deep pools were now filled with sand and gravel, firm bottom land was now a deep solstice pool of loneliness.

Only the rhythm of his cast and a hawk called him back.
His favorite stream – changed forevermore. It was still his home, just a different time.
A former of “all familiar” was yet some upstream short to find.
As for himself, he waited for the musical “note” yet to be, his one note… on a chime.

An emptiness took over, a chill touched his cheek.
He remembered her and moisture trickled and seeped.

She was with him still.
Another cast, the rhythm lifted his “dry,” lifted more, as sun broke.
It was then, in the haze, as the dry met water and sky,
A rush took his fly and muscled down below.
Grief was gone… for now, moments of joy took hold.
She was with him still.

Transcending from grief to contentment: a muddy muddled journey of awkwardness, of twisted solitude and aloneness. Never quite reaching the tree line of hopelessness.

Leaving what was and secure… on some fragile strength, by a hair, on a feather and a thread.

NCM