As the Salmon Runs Grow Thin

Our daughter has put herself

in hospital again.
­

I spend the day beside her,

talking, laughing, abiding silence
­

like two anglers on the lake,

late September silver salmon run.
­

Lying in her pink, kitty-hooded onesie,

sedatives, slumber-slurred
­

responses to the doctors,

she seems once more the three-year-old
­

we welcomed as a foster child,

who hankered for the salty pop
­

of salmon roe. In her early teens,

trauma-haunted hunger
­

for anything to numb the pain

overtook her spirit,
­

fierce as instinct flinging

spawning sockeyes into rocky streams,
­

tearing scales from their flanks.

She awakens, folds her tattooed arms
­

across her belly, smiles and says

I love you, Daddy.
­

My soul has caught a shoal of cohos.

My nets are full to bursting.