1.
Salmon rush the stream
into rapids. White wings
of gulls, eagles, and ravens
shadow their splashing,
the flash of fins’
riffling circle and streak.
Crowding the bank,
fireweed flare and fume
seed in spinnerets
that drift in swirls of light
on water the salmon
know after years at sea
as source, freshened
sense of even so few
parts per million.
And from millions spawned,
thousands thrashing the gamut
of mouth and gravel.
Like Li Po’s poems
set aflame and afloat,
this charged current,
the shallows like
shreds of burning script.
2.
Burning script. How many stories
and the tongues that told them, ash?
Our history, scattered sparks,
glimpses.
What had been done to us
we did to each other. Listen
like the blind who must
hear their dreams, these spaces
between our words a distance
we’ll cover with our hands.
Survivors to have made it
this far, I reach
for you, here
where we began, are
beginning again, this bed
where we kiss with our eyes open.