Spring Run

Spring Run

Spring and finally salmon
Enter the river’s mouth
A numinous moment for sacrifice
The silver guided missile-shaped
Torpedoes, the sea surge swollen
And hoary with Springers. Neptune
Watches from the surf, over
Plump chrome fish, and all ugliness
Is forgotten.

We drift the river
In the topaz hour before sunup
Two floating lures, a world apart
Two separate ways, two guys, one boat
Row past covered bridges, the banks
Of wildflowers, the island rocks thick
With otters and sea lions

We cast until daylight, a radiant
Summer morning, streamers sensing
The stream. The birds swarm like warplanes.
The waves round the rocking bow
Pulse like blood through the arteries

Today I had an e-mail from Iraq
“What a horribly difficult country”, My son wrote
After the day’s bloodbath and carnage
In a holy mosque near Baqubah. “During the night
A friend in a black coffin went home to Boston
To rest”.

Here on the same planet, we recline and fish
On the crystal water of the Rogue River.
An apparition trails through the bulrushes
And then a gull
And then a star.