Famous Water

 

I have fished famous water, steelhead Valhalla

flown far north to small-town fogged-in interior B.C.

—turned around, sent back to Vancouver to try to land

again the next day             four-wheeled hours to the boat to float

a wilderness river to wake early and spend days arms aching

casting my feathered hopes over distant water filled

with sea-run behemoths.  I have

 

shaken with adrenaline as world-record steelies tumbled and raced

water spraying when they shook my reel screaming, my heart racing

surrounded by impossibly tall spruce, grizzlies lurking nearby

 

held on until they were either lost or landed and released

 

still, I say

give me my home stream, the creek

that tumbles tiny from tundra to ponderosa in twelve falling miles,

through miniature canyons, over and past small falls

 

give me a day on home water filled with tiny gems

trout that weigh ounces not pounds

—cutthroat and rainbow whose mottled backs match

a bottom of green black maroon white pebbles

and fist-sized cobbles of gray and pepper granite

 

where my son once crawled in the aspen wood

as I fished,  where my wife wanted to be one last time between

hospital stays                                       before death

 

give me home, and I will seize it

without wanderlust, or regret