Wizardry by John Beaton Part III: in the "Tight Lines" poetry series. The pocket swirls in whorls of ruffled riffle flanked by funnelling flumes of race and runnel while fly-line dangles down the bouldered channel; it slaloms the shoulders where lissome waters carom and sparkling spangles jostle, solar blossom. Then all the elasticity of sunlight flows down his arm and flexes at the sweet spot as, to double-haul, he loads his fly-rod slingshot. Taut as the boom and gurdy of a troller, it catapults, extracts the line like a molar. As his back-cast springs and bends its graphite back, the rod draws a starry flash like a lightning smack and mints a constellation. A zodiac forms in the air as his forward flick flecks arcs with droplets blizzarding down in wizard's sparks. The thaumaturgic aura casts its sleight, transforms his rod and line to a pen of light - he lifts the fountain-wand and starts to write. His strokes are swift and slippery as Houdini's, his motions smooth and shadowy as a genie's. And he spells his casts in shade on jade reflections, in line-rips shined with sprays of splash-torn sequins, in glittery sweeps and swoops by jittery aspens. His flourished cursives slish-slash through the haze until the fly free-falls through the burnished blaze. It drops like a seed on the pocket from the skies. Will a sizeable sorcerer's prize materialize? He focuses his Wiccan powers. A rise! The grand surprise he strives to bring about? He strikes at the magic trick of the vanished trout! Hatches Magazine Subscription Price: $6.95 for each issue The Premiere issue is ready for shipping & the Fall 2008 issue will be available September 1st. Hatches Magazine Subscription Price: $6.95 for each issue The Premiere issue is ready for shipping & the Fall 2008 issue will be available September 1st.