Ghost Salmon
Restless
nights
Salmon dreams
whirling
At the mouth of the
Methow
Waiting for
rain
After dams and nets
Disease and
distance
Hard lines of
concrete:
The river is a broken
promise.
Soothing mountain
water
Tingles to
the core.
A secret path:
The scent from
Scatter Creek,
Bridge Creek
and Buttermilk.
There is plenty
reason
To come back.
Chinook move
tonight
In dreams
Behind boulders,
Pool to eddy,
The upstream dance,
And wait for rain.
Rest, float,
then go
A silver flash into
The streaming world.
Imagine a
world
Like a liquid memory
Carved in
stone
Of the lost runs
Remembered by the
river.
The Methow
waits
The spawning
to come
Memories deep within:
Boulders and
white foam
Leaping bodies.
They used to
wait
Just below French
Creek.
Does a river
forget?
Meanders and 100 year
floods
The birthing of ten
thousand souls
The death of all the
mothers and fathers
For ten thousand
years.
Can a river
forget
Such a thing?
Seedbeds below the
mountains
Between red pines and
aspen
Chinook and
River
And dreams
of ghosts
Returning.
The ghost of
salmon
in the Gold
Creek hole.
Scatter
Creek water
Sweeter than the
rest.
They cannot
stop
Transformed
By shallow
waters
In October.