In the pounding white is a man to kill,
vague in spray, hidden under the fall,
aware of roots convenient for descent
and the intentional guns,
and gone like cones in the pour
before the gunners can aim.
Easily the gunners’ coming has a core.
Here was a castoff widely hunted king
convinced these commoners would not climb down
shale scared gray by the roar.
They see him clawing moss spun out in foam
and the fern snap off in his hand.
The river screams release from run-off snow.
His plunge converted to the natural
by glacial green and the blurred bed
magnified in May.
He thought the kingdom waters loyal,
and rivers know where royalty can go.
Hermits dance the news to jubilant cities.
Leaders shout he will be found in August
blue where dollys spawn.
His gems will glow outrageous in the pool
like teeth reported in his smile;
our queen turned slightly from the flogger’s jest.
The king is dead. Long dance the queen
with a withering hermit down the streets
where gunners return to some girls.
Kisses sting at stories of the gorge,
roots that held in slipping shale,
the gun-impounding roar.
Water strands relax and water fades
from hands and moving water needs
old noises like the hum
of rats in stranded silt.
The river void of noise, the silent
whitefish slip to sucker colored rocks.
Pools are scanned by the paid incisive eyes
of camping children, every riffle checked,
each log and large stone poked
and no king turned.
Now absolutist beavers clog the stream
and every ponderosa hides a breathing king.
A poet said the force of flowing years
beat those noble bones to a petty size
to string them with the normal skeletons
of autumn on the sand.
Look. Today we call these salmon kings.
He was hanged for gross imagining.
Gunners see him every May in the white,
and never seeing him, shoot through rainbowing spray.
Gone like cones in the pour—
and what can the gunners say.
The queen is thin in a cave removed from summer.
And wet light rolls through the hermit sleep of a hunter.