(Fishing I)

My home far away
is gutteral
follows its own voice.

Fish work their lips
open and closed
in the thin air
of stone vaults.

My father
brings me to their meadow
once a year.


(Fishing II)

The mountain
speaks a language of deer runs,
fish bones and berries;
it cries at night
shackled to rain.

When old men fish
they talk with drums
sit together in cacoons and pray; 
their heads wave like trout.

Young men stare. Like geese
they seize the current in their mouths 
carry light upstream on their backs.


(Klickitat Meadows)

Into the water
clutching a black-slimed trout.
It coiled and uncoiled.
My heat bled
in a long rope downstream.

We lay in the river’s wind
under waving rocks.

My father next day caught my fish
and carried it down the mountain 
wrapped in leaves that smelled like vanilla.


(Lenice Lake)

Something breathes,
the same that chips obsidian patiently 
awaiting your eyes.

The sun is a loon at dusk
with long sweeping wings,
it bloodies the head of sagebrush 
and shatters the wing of other 
birds into rainbow.

Night hawks beat the air.
They have heard of the old earth 
that lives here.