Long before you turn westwards
To face the coming of storms.
Long before this time.
Lying there, huddled despair,
Curls of innocence,
You silken breath now on edge.
Long before you turn, lingering,
Holding the shadowy forgotten muses
The old exuberance of dreams
From a waking morning
When Spring and sun
Rang eternal promise,
And tingled joy.
Long before all this,
Let me hear your woes, regrets
And all the sinful exhortations.
Before you run pure
Into summer’s long eve.
I realized this afternoon the contrasts that fly fishing for steelhead can present. One moment is the easy sound of water slipping through partially sunken willow stems. The water curls though a mass of green wands just now beginning to show a hint of early spring. Here the water is soft and lulling in its demeanor. Down the way, a cluster of deeper shoots gently waves in the air. The afternoon wind is just now sending greetings upriver and the ripples in the flatwater of the pool below suggest that this quiet time will soon pass as I hunker down into my jacket, pull up my collar and snug up my waders. Contemplation time is over and the work begins. Across the slicks and boils of the run, a few blue wing olives struggle on the surface, harbingers of mid-day’s arrival and perhaps the time when the river comes to life.
The fly comes tight on the swing… dropping into the slicks on the far side to swim across green water speckled with small boulders faintly visible in the green water. And the grab is deliberate and solid with the fish whisking away into the backing as I grab what seems like my first breath. The immense splash and tail well above where my line arcs out and across the stream indicates a fish gone berserk. It turns back down throwing a god awful loop of slack line on the water and is seemingly gone on that one turn. But I manage to come tight again as the fish wallows across the surface far across and down. Once again, the fish turns down and my finger touches the taut backing, now like a bandsaw. Finally, the fish comes in. With racing heartbeat I remember the quiet moments of just a few minutes ago, now like another place and time. Looking around as the fish darts off, the willow stems shudder and vibrate in the currents now. Everything seems to move here.
Dear Elinor
Dreams of you. For years I’ve gazed at your sweeping curves and how you hold the light. For years, I’ve dreamed that we might someday meet up and I might know you close up and intimate. I dreamed it might be like the first time again. Sometimes I would imagine that we were together in a past life, the way you seemed to be at once familiar, but distant. To look at you from afar, was to stare across worlds of being, moments of presence that would send a shiver up my spine. But you were never easy… living on the other side of the trees. Oh sure, I tried a couple of times to come find you. Each time, though, I was denied, left to wallow in a wall of poison oak that denied me access to the waters of my desire. Oh, I know you’ve entertained many. And they come from far away to sit in your bosom but they move on, leaving you alone, empty. Oh, to find the path to your heart.
The obvious. The walk to your home should have been obvious years ago. And, this time, I immediately knew where to go.
When we met. The fog was lingering low and thick along your length that morning. Step closer and there you were stretched before my eyes. Your are more lovely up close than I dreamed. Sparkling emerald eyes – your long, slick lines slide easily into the broken waters where fresh steelhead might lie. Lined with rubble from a nearby creek, you give home to a thousand lies. And, you call me in, beckoning me to immerse myself in your soul. Each cast-swing-step and we mumble sweet nothings to one another, and occasionally a long “mmmmmmm” is whispered. It is only with my undivided attention that you give up your secrets. Here and there, the life you hold in your heart comes to me, shining bright in the muted light of a fog-bound sun. I might count them one-by-one, or just call this morning with you one long fluid motion of your presence. We hold one another, dance, and whisper the sweet nothings that I’ve dreamed of for years. As we go, you are better with each step. Finally, I muster the courage to leave you when the first hints of an early afternoon breeze ripple your calm waters. We turn our back, knowing full well that we will meet again soon enough.
Don’t start poems past bedtime.
The words swirl about, mingle and change.
Words that toss and turn.
The scenes in dreams become the poems.
Poems evoke dreams
Under blank paper blankets.
Regardless, don’t start poems at night, past bedtime.
This is a sketch of a day spent on the Queets River on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington. It was a day of catching and releasing wild steelhead and sea run bull trout. Everything was cold and still here, and at the end of the road, it seemed as though I was the only one around. This is a place a long way from anywhere, but somehow in the midst of the soul of something bigger than me. Ironically, the day seemed to be almost a mix of unplaced anxiety over this sudden solitude and awestruck fascination with a place I have wanted to visit for so long. Here I found that the thin line between unplaced fear and ecstatic exuberence runs through the trees, along the river and up the hill.
.
In the trees, there is no luxury of imagining summer,
As I follow a thin faint line, draped over stick and stone.
Tracing a path of hope across these shadowy woods,
I now know each breath, short and seen,
Each thought, passing and glancing,
While nighttime fidgets and snarls wherever I lean.
.
When the way out is momentarily forgotten,
Where the single frail thread is hidden under moss and bough,
A chill courses through my spine, rippling across my brow.
.
Along the river, to my utter surprise,
Wrapped in high haze were grand winter skies!
Cast in a muted sun, hung low over high tree
This theater of emptiness sees night briefly flee.
.
Now, surely, a desperate reprieve from winter’s meddles,
To wash away that shuddering thought:
That out here, daylight is a cruel trick,
Luring me into its seasonal plot!
.
Oh, forget the water sounds,
Wind through trees, silent soaring birds.
Forget these tones of wild place!
For they were swallowed, broadside and whole
By a darkness lingering at every space.
The hard line of rain is drawn across the sky.
Marking the place where even the restless wake
From a sleep they so patiently waited for.
A half open window
Buffeted by wind
Creeping through doors and cracks
Of a hollow house standing tall
In golden seas:
. Hosts of October’s departure.
.
Wind shuffling papers off a dusty table
Scattering and sliding along dark wooden floors.
.
On the table, the long swoop of her fingers
Catches the last, late sun:
. Bony knuckles in pale skin.
.
Little games the wind plays:
. A back door slams shut,
. Sneaking open again.
.
Her eyes, silent and empty:
. A blank stare across fields of time
. Become rusted playgrounds.
At just the right angle:
. Sparkling. Just then.
.
She’s sat here for a hundred years:
. Maybe longer,
Beside this window to the wind.
.
Messages, there are none
Until a warm gust,
Catching her grey hair,
.
Sprawled fingers curl then loosen
.
Warm tidings rippling through the grass
Knocking on a window
Where she’s waited for so long.
.
On a gust, the door flies open
Like a deep breath through the rooms
And for just a moment
The faintest, sweetest smell,
Like wispy memories of life,
She thinks.
.
Now the sudden hush of stillness.
.
All so warm and easy
This tall house, leaning on years
Fingers grasping for the last of the light.
.
And the warm, sweet smell of her passing still lingers here
As October’s stories scatter across dark skies and warm winds.
A skylight guides the sun across a solitary houseplant,
Sitting high, leaves perched,
For another filtered afternoon.
Her pale, bony hands,
Long fingers fidgeting, waiting,
Don’t notice how they play in the light.
.
Outside, a cold, dry wind whirls up dust,
Roadside greetings on the edge of town.
Across the street, dry leaves
Scattered in crackling waves
Erase any hope summer might linger here.
.
A couple trails the sidewalk,
Clutching bags, heads down,
Maybe mustering the courage,
thinking they can catch sail
And pass over the ridge
One at a time.
.
Away from the leaves,
behind the shriveled mass of a car
Unmoving for months,
A dog lies in the dirt.
.
Sitting along the storefront, the cheapsters,
Puppeteers of badness, now wilting and fading,
Propped up briefly by a cigarette passed amongst them,
Go on thinking the game is still on,
Though their eyes are hollow,
Echoing the wind.
.
Soon the skylight will recount her life,
Moving across the far wall,
Framed in awkward moments,
That never really happened that way.
A draping cobweb catches the light
Almost like it could connect the story.
Dust floats and sparkles,
Airy reflections of illumed times.
That brief light.
.
Her fingers set onto the dishes now
Hot soapy water,
Cold sunshine pouring through a kitchen window,
A plate, a bowl, dinner, breakfast and snack
All passing through shiny, wet fingers,
Those fingers,
Still deft in their movement,
Still alive with song, and the stories
Her gesturing hands could tell.
.
October afternoon:
The fate of a single alder leaf
Drifting down,
might have been sealed
Long before the tree.
.
Now
Is less about early afternoon breezes.
More about lingering mornings,
Not yet ripe and flavored
With neatly packaged memories of summer.
.
This leaf floats through air
not yet lacquered in winter,
But stained with the patina of a mid-day sun
That hides swimming holes and watermelons.
.
Still,
This is time for one more earful of cricket song,
frog speak,
Stinging mosquito bite.
.
Where the leaf lands,
tastes of dust in cool woods.
.
Creeks move in tiny whispers here,
If they haven’t gone forgotten.
.
I’ve spent 26 years yearning to catch a fish on the surface on the long, slick tail of North-South run at low flow. I don’t know why I’ve never really tried. Many a night was spent dreaming about the lay of the water here – how it eases out of the bucket and across a field of cobblestones and small boulders. At low flows, three distinct boulders give away their presence with trailing slicks. Viewed at the right angle in mid-day, the water might seem too shallow. At sunset, from the hard bank on river right, it looks like a private steelhead garden: just deep enough to hide a few secrets but shallow enough to chug a skating fly over the heads of aggressive steelhead. Anyhow, that’s what I’ve spent years fantasizing about. Why I have never put in more skating time in the lower half of that run, where swinging sunk flies rarely pays off, is beyond me. Tonite it all came together. The skating window in mid-September seems to be on the order of 20 minutes. The sun is well over the hill and “true sunset” where the sun is dipping over some ocean horizon out west is most likely at hand. The light casts a golden hue across the surface of the water. This seems to be the 20 minutes when day turns to evening – it’s the start of something and it really doesn’t announce it’s coming. Somewhere along the way, stare at the water’s surface and it glows golden – it’s that simple.
Work down through the run skating and chugging a god-awful concoction of deer hide, elk and foam. Maybe it’ll work, maybe it won’t. Again and again, the little vee wake and splashes give away the fly’s presence on the long cast two thirds of the way across. This is not sleepy time work since the fly must be kept alive at all times. This is the most engaging fishing of all. The dressed hook is connected by a thin line 80 feet long to me via rod and reel. It’s my job to impart some sense of life to this thing – is it the skittering, fearful critter? Might it be a wondering, exploring, curious creature of both land and river? Pick a mood and stick with it.
The take is violent and will replay in slow motion in my memory for days. The large fish seems to curl around the fly, half out of the water, sending a splash sounding like a piglet falling into the water. The hook sets, the fish goes airborne and the line goes limp with a charge towards me. Dancing backwards along the cobble-strewn bank, the light comes tight and the reel churns out line with a clicker now whining with high speed discharge of line in a hurry. Hold tight for another several seconds before the line goes limp and the fish comes unbuttoned.
This fish was 26-years in the making. Let’s hope the next one comes a little sooner.
Water temperature: 18.2 C
Discharge: 650 cfs
Note that McMillan’s data suggest that optimal skating temps are in the neighborhood of 8C to 15C with his observations declining at 18 – so many skating days lie ahead!!!!!
Shaken Rain 