Salmon Cascades

Picnic

Sol Duc River, September 2001

Salmon leap so quickly,
one of us can't believe
she caught a glimpse. 
Fins. Tails.
No way to name which is which
among patches of blue-black
and too many cascades to call
this a river. It is a surge,
electric, terrifying, drawing
each one of us in.

The sky is a house of clouds.
Light rain begins to fall.
No matter. The salmon rise
and dip. The crowd, among
sandwiches and apples and pop,
cheers. No one is going home.

Our bodies lean closer to the surge,
to this place where air is a mix
of rock and dust and river-spray.

All around us, the leaves yellow and fall.
From the banks, we coax the late summer coho,
cheer them along, as if by leaping
they'll be saved.

Night comes on slowly.
No one leaves.
Only the salmon are headed home.

 

awake only to feed Maeve--
I think of Ruth,
the obituary she sent in Tuesday's mail,
and the note about the Holy Spirit
included for me. 

Suddenly, the idea of death is everywhere
a veil of movement wrapping
itself around me 
not tightly
but completely.
Diaphanous.
Full.
I want to call it black chemise
but it is canvas.

And this black canvas makes me forget, for a moment,
that I nurse a six week old baby.

I reach out for thoughts to fill
the space death has made.

* * *

I imagine Marian, beautiful friend,
in a yoga pose called trikonasana--
and I know this means triangle.

If I could, I would take death's canvas
and paint her there--shape her body
into many flowing, breathing triangles. 

* * *
Then, my mind far away--
Maeve spits up
and hot sticky-sweet milk fills the crook
of my arm, runs onto lap and chair.

Sudden as love
it brings me back to her.
To this room,
where a night light
flickers tiny triangles through the dark.