View From the Shore

A perfect autumn morning it was, water, sky and silvery morning light, drifting fog and reeds almost invisible in its embrace, maples reddening and aspens going gold on the far shore. The rocks and hills away in the distance were smudges, but I didn't need to see them or capture them with my lens. I remembered them from other years, and I could see them in my mind's eye.

What more does one need on the trailing edge of a day on October's middling pages than this? A heron in the shallows would be grand, a loon or two calling from the center, a paddling of quackers or a skein of geese? Perhaps an eagle describing majestic circles in the sky overhead?

No, everything that matters is already here.